PROJECT: THE WAY IT SHOULD’VE BEEN TOUR

Like most people, music is a crucial part of my everyday life and something that I grew up with. Unlike most people however, my taste in music is a bit different. One thing I continuously miss every time the seasons change and it begins to get warm outside is something many who were “scene kids” miss.

Vans Warped Tour

In my opinion, it never should’ve left, so I created something to fill the void it created.

Goal: Create a music festival that brings back the rabid fandom that metalcore, hardcore, and other alternative genres once had.

THE PROCESS

This project called for a few items: branding, OOH ad placements, social media ads, other promotional items, and an end product video that would showcase the event and attract potential concert goers.

I created a few different logos, but really landed on two specific logos that would go hand in hand with one another.

I decided to make something that was reminiscent of the Warped Tour logo. I wanted to pay homage to it as it is and always will be something that is important to me. In the main logo on the right, I have the arrow pointing to the left, symbolizing the past and really trying to play onto the nostalgia aspect that I wanted to convey within this tour. The color palette I chose as well was more of a retro take on the bright neon yellow and red that the original Vans Warped Tour was known for.

The Real Reason Behind This

In today’s world, a career in music seems almost impossible, especially for bands in the metalcore, hardcore, post hardcore, and other alternative music genres. It wasn’t always like this. Of course, streaming music does have a part in this issue as artists are lucky to even see $0.003 per stream on their songs, but there’s another issue here at play. There is a direct correlation to when touring summer festivals began to die and the death of being able to make a living playing heavier music.

With the death of summer festivals such as Vans Warped Tour and Summer Slaughter Fest, it left a lot of bands in a rut. Many depended on summer tours like these to gain new fans, sell merch, and do meet and greets. Without these festivals, it made it more difficult for up and coming bands to grow their fanbases and crushed their ability to have a steady income for 3 months. This makes it more difficult for bands to tour during the rest of the year as well, as without the fanbase to travel to, smaller bands suffer on their tours as they play to smaller crowds, sell less merch, and spreading the message through word of mouth diminishes. The lack of these summer festivals also creates the issue of not allowing smaller bands to network with one another, creating another problem of not being able to string together tours during the year.

“The Way It Should’ve Been Tour” will ultimately be for the artists on the tour, giving them a lifeline to depend on every year. As a byproduct, fans will gain the experience of a lifetime since artists will have a greater stream of income and less financial stress due to this tour.

A way to drive interest and hype behind this event would be through social media ads and via OOH ads. The OOH ads would be placed in the cities these events would take place in and in the surrounding towns outside of the areas.

Here are some mockups of what these posts and posters would look like: