This time I got to create whole new graphics for the next Club Infektio event again. As I've been eyeing acid graphics inspiration for a while now, I decided to try if the Club Infektio crew would be down for it and DJ emanon happily approved my concept idea. As I've been photographing multiple events, I already had tons of photos to use as an illustration. Just mixed two photos that fitted well together.
I really dig this style personally and I've been planning to evolve Samael Creative graphic style into something similar as well. Hopefully, you also like it and I wouldn't mind doing more stuff like this!
Club Infektio 2023-08 - Graphics
Here is a link to the event:
See you on the dance floor!
Need a graphic designer?
Hit me up if you have any graphics need big or small. Samael Creative is specialized in the music and event industry with darker tones and attitude.
Mission in Jedha - An immersive unofficial Star Wars-themed event
For the fans from the fans
Client: Night In Experience Productions
Kulttuurikeskus Gloria, Helsinki
2018
Join with the rebels and help to prevent evil empires' plans. You are about to enter Jedha where you'll meet dangers and plot to steal plans of a super secret new hyperdrive plans.
Wednesday and Thursday are for the whole family (i.e. kids over 10 years old) and Friday and Saturday events are only for adults (K18). The event is in English. After the immersive event, there is a secret movie showing.
The Project
For this event, I got to create the logo, and all the promo material like posters, banners, and a short teaser video. I had planned a lot more videos for this, but as it was an unofficial event put together by volunteers the scheduling end up being a nightmare. Most people had to build their costumes completely ground up, so at the beginning, the only people with costumes were the ones from the 501st Legion.
If you have ever been part of any fan-made events of other larger projects you know it's chaotic and nothing goes as it does in the professional world and for me this was the first one of these. After this one however I've taken part in multiple similar projects, so I've learned the difference by now and how to navigate through them, but back in 2018 I gotta admit that I was annoyed most of the time because it was sometimes a complete waste of time and waiting for other to get things done and when I finally got to do my work, everyone had a rush to somewhere all of sudden because my part was always put the last even though my materials were needed the first. Of course, I can't expect a similar commitment from volunteers working on a fan project as I do in professional projects.
The Logo Design
We had an excellent idea about the logo, so there was really no conception at all. We wanted to create it in a similar style as the Star Wars original trilogy logos that came with the Empire Strikes Back (if I remember correctly)
The Photoshoots
This is where all the chaotic stuff really started as it was quite hard to get everyone working together. First I had a shoot with Darth Vader alone and later I took photos from a few members for social media ads, but then organizers decided not to spend any money on advertising and I never really did anything with the later photoshoot materials other than a few poster designs for fun (this was a volunteer fan-made event after all).
The Teaser Video
This is where I got really frustrated as we had planned this for weeks and when the shooting day came it end up being a crafting day instead and we had to rehearse and shoot everything in only 30 minutes. Probably my fastest shoot for anything, but at least it was fun.
Not a big job, but I got to basically just edit the old Club Infektio graphics made by Anni Murtosaari with the new date, artists, and a new look. I also thought adjusting the colors a little from the previous event would be cool, so they look fresh.
Club Infektio 2023 Vol 3 - Graphics
Here is a link to the event:
See you on the dance floor!
Need a graphic designer?
Hit me up if you have any graphics need big or small. Samael Creative is specialized in the music and event industry with darker tones and attitude.
Knight Fight was a buhurt event I arranged as part of Verkkokauppa.com Digimessut event. Most people have no idea what buhurt is, so if interested CHECK THIS.
It was really interesting to be part of managing this little event after I got to make all the graphics (including the front page of Helsingin Sanomat).
I've done quite a lot of stuff for Club Infektio and been tight with the crew all the way back to their first club events in 2011.
Some of my first music photography was taken at their events and even today I still shoot at some of their events. But on top of photography, I've also created some illustrations and done graphic design for them. Here are some of those works during the years working together.
I got almost a completely free playfield with this case. I was to build complete branding including the brand name and the website for a new hair salon for hairstylist Elina Sorri.
She wanted her hair salon to look like straight out of Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter universe and so it needed to look a bit vintage with a touch of magic.
Because she is specialized in colourful hair dyes, my first thoughts were around alchemy and so I end up checking through the internet if the brand name Alkemisti was already reserved or not. There was some sort of media company that had reserved the domain alkemisti.fi, but it seemed like they either had never got into the business at all or had already shut down. Currently, their site is completely down.
To add more Diagon Alley style for the brand, I suggested calling her little salon as "hiuspuoti" which gave a bit more magical vibe. And so she registered her company as Hiuspuoti Alkemisti.
Because she wanted to have a darker-looking website and branding, I decided to go for the proper brand color with nice contrast and antique feeling suitable for alchemy and that is of course gold. I tried tens of different variations, but the top five were all art nouveau style with tons of extra elements I could use on the website and on her boutique windows.
On top of the colors, I decided to add the philosopher's stone symbol below the logo and use it as a favicon. This also added the Harry Potter universe vibe because the philosopher's stone symbols look a lot like the Deadly Hallows symbol.
Alkemisti advertising assets
After Hiuspuoti Alkemisti was launched I also made her some social media and Google ad banners. For most of these, I used stock photos and she wanted me to find photos with alt-style people with colorful hair and I used all I could find for either ad or for her blog.
After a few weeks, she started getting a lot of messages about how much people liked these ads and that really inspired me to design more of them.
I do not usually make copies for the ads, but this time I wrote all the copies as well, and especially the "Pakkasmyssy" campaign rocked the boat really well.
At one point my boss said he hated our current business cards because they looked like clothing store price tags and Verkkokauppa.com sells pretty much everything except clothing.
My colleague had just designed some new wall tapestry for the Helsinki store with this new black background and I really liked it, so I took some inspiration for these new business cards. On the wall tapestry there is this big V printed in dark grey.
My idea was to do something similar, but instead of grey color, I wanted to use the spot gloss technique.
Some of the "smaller" work cases I've had are multiple printed banderols and other print media for Verkkokauppa.com.
I've done tons of online banners during my years as a graphic designer and I think they are too small works to have a post of their own. As clients have requested to see some of them I created this great dump of banners.
Do note that some of these banners are also animated GIFs and only work as you click them open. Some are also social feed banners which mean there are no CTA or long copies as those are added to the post itself.
For Mitoro, I've got to do everything for them from their re-branding to their brand new website. In this article, I'm only going through the branding and you can read about the website project HERE.
Originally my job was to only remake their old WordPress website, but as I went through it I quickly noticed that they had close to no branding at all. The only thing keeping everything together was a simple text logo and a photoset they had done years back. So I offered to do the whole re-branding together with the new website.
The logo didn't overall need to be changed much. Rather than completely changing everything I created this green heart symbol messaging more of their eco-friendly approach to hairstyling and their used products.
The heart symbol is simple, but that little symbol alone made a huge impact on their brand making it look more quality hair salon than before. Now also heavily used on their social media it makes it easier to be recognizable even without spelling their name.
Together with their logo they also wanted to use their brand message "Puhdas ja Lempeä", but as it was also the name of one of their services I created a logo version that works together with their services. This has also made it way easier to keep everything together in their advertising materials, but more about that later.
For their typography, I chose something fairly common that will be easy to use and read together with the logo font. People who focus on other than creative things are not always so familiar with downloading and installing custom fonts, so it had to be something already available so they can also use it on their own.
With the branding done, I also designed new window tapes doing some uplifting to their old smoky white tapes with just the name Mitoro on them.
We also removed the old ads from upper windows that completely blocked the sunlight and added the heart symbol to the right window that can be seen far away from the closest tram stop and another heart symbol around the corner that could be also seen far away from the other direction.
Overall I'm always against putting ads on windows tapes because that gives some other brand all the spotlight instead of the company advertising them. You do not want that hair shampoo brand to take all the eyes, instead, you want your own hair salon to be known and remembered.