Designing a festival
Tirgan is a summer festival in Toronto. It is a celebration of Iranian culture, food, dance, and music. This year, it is the 10th anniversary of my creative collaboration with Tirgan. It’s been quite a journey from its humble inception in 2008 to becoming a well-known name among Toronto’s busy summer festival calendar. Here’s how we designed Tirgan.
2008: The beginnings
The first festival was held in 2008 by a small group of volunteer organizers, under a different name: “Once upon a time.” I was asked to create the festival’s logo and visual identity and help produce all the festival assets. I wanted the festival’s brand to capture the fun, vibrant, and lively atmosphere that the event promised. For the logo, I used the elegant curves of Persian calligraphy to create a butterfly out of the festival’s name. The inaugural poster was an explosion of colors, shapes, and motifs that helped people anticipate the type of activities on offer at the festival. Arabesque flourishes hinted at the festival’s Persian roots.
2011: Tirgan gets its name
In 2011 the festival was permanently renamed to Tirgan. Tirgan’s roots date back thousands of years to an ancient celebration, and we wanted a new identity to reflect and celebrate the enduring nature of the occasion. Because people were already familiar with the previous festival’s branding, I wanted the new logo to feel like a logical evolution of the old one and contain the same essential elements; uplifting colours and Persian typography. It was ultimately the tree motif that emerged as our final brand.
For the branding, our plan was to use the logo as a consistent anchor, wile designing a new poster for each edition of the festival. For the 2011 edition, I created a visual language inspired by Persian tapestry. With our event line-up changing frequently, this design allowed us to scale and adapt quickly.
2013: Bigger and better
By 2013 Tirgan was already in its third edition and was attracting crowds of well over 100,000. My theme for the 2013 edition of the festival was ‘colliding worlds,’ an affirmation of the dichotomy between the festivals’ western physical setting and its eastern cultural content. With the festival itself growing, we had many more assets to produce; posters, event booths, print ads, festival programs, sponsorship guides, merchandising, signage. In addition to overseeing the production of all these assets, I also designed the UX and user interface for our iPhone app. We made gratuitous use of Sam Javanrouh’s brilliant photos of Toronto, who graciously allowed us to use them.
2015: Tirgan turns 5
2015 was a special year because it was our 5th edition of the festival. By now Tirgan now had its own office and permanent staff, in addition to our passionate and ever-growing volunteers. It was also the first time I was working with the team remotely after having moved to San Francisco.
I was itching for a more illustrative style this time, and after exploring several directions I ended up with the ‘halves’ concept, showing cross-sections of elements that have similar significance in both Iranian and Canadian cultures.
In addition to creative direction for the festival, I also updated the design of our app to be compatible with the newer iOS version as well as our updated festival theme.
2017: a day at the fair
After the 2015 festival, and after so many years in charge of the festival’s design, I wanted to hand the torch to someone else with fresh ideas. But old flames die hard, and over a cup of coffee in the summer of 2016, the festival organizers convinced me to keep the fire burning for another year.
Thankfully, the festival’s 2017 artistic statement provided just the spark I needed. It drew parallels between multiculturalism in ancient Iran and modern day Canada. This gave me an idea for visually representing this concept in a way that built on the success of the 2015 creatives for which the festival received a good deal of positive feedback.
To realize the idea, I decided to work with the talented Alex Mostov, Seattle-based illustrator whose style I love.
In the foreground, the stone reliefs of Persepolis, ancient Iranian palace, bridge the past and the present and — I hope — spark a moment of reflection and contemplation; the ruins might be thousands of years old, and people’s sense of fashion might have evolved somewhat, but the spirit and drive that motivated them to celebrate and enjoy life is still as new as ever.
Tirgan gets a little sister
Also in 2017, Tirgan started hosting the Nowruz Festival, a smaller festival that coincides with the Persian new year. For this, I wanted to create visuals that made it obvious it was a ‘Tirgan’ event, while making sure people don’t confuse the two festivals. So I stuck with the same hand-drawn feel and illustrative style, but changed the primary color to green and dropped the Persepolis illustration in favour of a 7-seen spread; the traditional table that is set out for the Persian new year.
2019: more collaborations
For the past few months I’ve been working on the 2019 creatives. This time, the work is based on collaboration between even more creatives. The new poster will be revealed at the Tirgan Yalda fundraising Gala in a few days. I can’t wait to share it with you all here after that :)
