USC Femfest 2021

GRAPHIC DESIGN & ANIMATION

MADE WITH: Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Blender, and JSplacement.

MISSION STATEMENT: “SAGE’s (USC Student Assembly for Gender Empowerment) FemFest aims to be an inclusive safe space that highlights those oppressed by the patriarchy in the music industry. Intersectional at our core, FemFest is open to everyone, and specifically amplifies the voices of women, people of color, and those within the LGBTQ+ community.”

Fall 2020 – Spring 2021, I served as a web developer and graphic designer for Femfest’s first fully-online music festival. My responsibilities included creating social media content, designing merch, designing/building our web platform, and overseeing our Twitch livestream.

I served as Creative Director for Femfest 2022.

FemFest 2021 Logo

I began by searching for typefaces used by the genre of avant-pop and PC Music adjacent artists we hoped to attract to our festival. I studied the visual motifs that were common between these typefaces, and created a mood board to use as reference while I worked.

I based the logo off of the font, “Sofachrome”, by Ray Larabie because I felt that it gave the “futuristic/cyberspace” mood that our team had decided on.

I then altered the text to incorporate repeating motifs, similar to those I observed in my mood board. I paid close attention to the way that each letter flows into the next, creating one clearly defined shape when seen as a whole. Each horizontal stroke ends in an upwards or downwards taper, which is echoed by the entire logo as a whole.

I styled the logo in Photoshop based on discussions I previously had with the graphics team. We had decided to incorporate elements of liquid, chrome, and neon, to once again reflect the aesthetics of the queer internet rave community which Femfest aims to contribute to. To capture the energy of this music, I focused on creating sharp contrast and noisy texture, while maintaining a glossy pop finish.

Lastly, I incorporated Femfest’s redesigned heart icon (by Esha Chekuri) to frame the logo. I added colored and textured smoke to add to the rave atmosphere of the design.

“Femfest Friends” Team Highlights

I created these graphics were used to introduce each of our Femfest 2021 team members! We decided to theme each team as a different trading card pack. I rendered our logo in the style of the Mattel Inc toy company. I then made a template for the trading cards, which could be easily recolored and customized for each team member. I created the backgrounds using Photoshop and the Red Giant’s “Trapcode” plugins for After Effects.

Galentine’s Day Zoom Backgrounds

I decided to create a series of animated Zoom backgrounds for our February “Galentine’s Day” fundraiser! I thought this would help bring a little bit of the atmosphere from an in-person rave to our live streamed DJ sets. The backgrounds are seamless 12 second loops, created entirely After Effects (with the exception of the Femfest logo, which was rendered in Blender). Each features a femfest-themed phrase inspired by the classic “Sweetheart” Valentine’s Day candies. Each one of the 9 backgrounds was available for download on the festival website.

ENTER THE FEST Promo

I made this graphic for a scrapped lineup announcement video for the festival. The video was going to be in the style of Tom Kan’s title design for the movie Enter The Void (embedded on the right). While we (unfortunately) did not have access to the electrophotography equipment that Kan used for Enter The Void, I did my best to recreate a similar look in After Effects! I used scripting and nested compositions to procedurally generate each frame.

Event Poster

The full lineup poster was designed to support the otherworldly feeling of Femfest’s performances. I created the text layout in Illustrator. I imported this into Blender and extruded in order to create the 3D text. I chose to do this in Blender because I wanted the poster to feel very physical. With Blender’s Cycles render engine I could achieve more realistic long shadows than I’ve been able to in 2D programs like Photoshop, creating a believable sense of depth. I created the background material procedurally, which allowed for easy recoloring and animation. I tweaked all of my Blender renders in After Effects in order to get closer to the mysterious/magical feeling I was trying to achieve.

Thank You Cards

After the festival, I made looping musical thank you cards for all of our talent. Each card features our festival mascot, Socks The Bunny, dressed up with a reference to the artist’s performance at Femfest (ex: Caroline Polachek performed surrounded by candles, Coco & Clair Clair wore sunglasses, etc.) The music is a simple bossa nova groove that I wrote in Logic Pro X. For Fraxiom’s card, I played a variation on the melody to their song with Gupi, “Thos Moser”, on guitar, and for Dorian Electra’s card I added samples from their Splice pack.