Visual Communication - Bachelor

Nebulous Festival 2030

Nebulous Festival 2030 envisions the festival landscape in five years using innovative designs and predicted music and technology trends. Nebulous hosts a variety of shoegaze music artists at a uniquely engineered venue, catering for the audience's desire for a more personalised, immersive experience. Merchandise combines the brand's tailored, unique branding with wearables, while branding anticipates what is next for advertising channels.

Sophia Strauss

ABOUT THE NEBULOUS DESIGN PROJECT

I love a music festival as much as anyone else, but in recent times I have found that music festivals local to Brisbane lack a level of originality. Major players in the industry tend to gather mainstream artists and the same small Australian bands, so the festival landscape is almost indistinguishable. As niche music genres are anticipated to gain more traction, there will be an increase in genre-specific music events, providing an opportunity for event organisers to develop a truly unique brand identity and accompanying tech-driven experiences that change the game.

I wanted to take a look into the future of the music festival industry and see what can be expected, and create what is not expected. The Nebulous Festival 2030 design project is driven by a desire to catalyse the concept of a festival experience in five years’ time.

In researching up-and-coming music genres, shoegaze was a word that repetitively appeared. A resurgence of the tune from the late 1980s is evident amongst particularly Gen Z listeners. From here, I sought to explore the possibility of a shoegaze music festival set in 2030, where innovative experiences will hopefully eventuate.

Shoegaze is narcotic, daydreamy, and hazy, so I sought to reflect this in the branding. Inspired by a Nebula and colours repetitively appearing in shoegaze imagery, I selected a colour palette, designed a logo, selected matching typography, and developed icons for use throughout branding.
As an advertising student, I wanted to consider the future of festival promotion. Key trends such as hyper-personalisation and interactivity were essential to include as I, myself, need to know what to expect as I enter the industry.

I envisioned a world where Instagram and other social media platforms integrate interactivity, and additionally designed a personalised lineup reveal for audiences where data sourced from music streaming services announces their likely favourite artist and an individual new recommendation.
Billboards are also anticipated to introduce new technologies. I generated an animation of a Nebulous billboard that heightens engagement through the background colours ‘following’ pedestrians that walk by the billboard.
With a new generation comes necessary consideration of their expectations regarding design. Due to the role of AR and VR, there is an anticipated move away from designing with minimalism and towards designing with skeuomorphism to create a sense of reality in an unreal world. The curved, asymmetrical yet central stage accounts for audience members using augmented reality headsets and eyewear as elements of the screens come to life, while including those without this technology through bubbles and floating lights in the real world.
The return of hyper-realistic design will mean that designers must create high-fidelity assets, potentially even with neo-skeuomorphism design features such as imitating gravity, texture, or weight, meaning I needed to consider how I could actually design for the audience to feel the music.

The Nebulous hoodie is available for sale at the festival, matching the brand style while placing designs in unique positions across the fabric to step away from generic design choices.
In researching the anticipated adoption of mixed-reality tech, it is evident that we are near the widescale integration of wearables. The Nebulous hoodie therefore accounts for this evolution through a wearable sewn on the inside of the sleeve of the hoodie, sending vibrations into the arm of the wearer that matches the beat of the shoegaze music at the festival, and can later be used in conjunction with music streaming services.

Sophia Strauss

Sophia is a QUT design and business student majoring in visual communication and advertising. Enthusiastic about encouraging more advanced creativity, Sophia intends on making an impact on the advertising industry through breaking through norms and wondering what can be done better.