Julia Taylor
The most recent project that I had was a logo for the 2024 Virginia Black Dance Festival for Professor Raines, my agency supervisor for my internship with Sankofa Dance Theatre. I was assigned Sankofa Dance Theatre by Professor O’Dell for my internship. The client’s request for this project was a logo for the 2024 Virginia Black Dance Festival. There is already a logo for the festival itself. She wanted a logo for the year, like you would design a new shirt each year for a festival. Professor Raines already had an idea about the logo in mind. It was the state of Virginia with the festival name and tagline around the state. The requirements for the logo were the year of the festival, Virginia Black Dance Festival, Unearthing Virginia’s Dance Gems, and the state of Virginia.
There was a few challenges; one of which was expanding the idea she had. In the experiments of expanding her idea, the logo looked too simple. Font selection was a slight challenge. I tried to use a font similar and paired well with the Virginia Black Dance Festival logo. The most difficult part of this project was finding the dance poses. She wanted generally inclusive dance poses to represent all of the dance styles, something recognizable across all dance styles. Finding and stylizing the poses was a challenge. To help the creative process, I googled and used Pinterest to find dance and festival logos. I used what I saw in those logos to stylize the dance poses for the logo.
Another challenge was deadlines. This wasn’t a major challenge but it was something. From what I recall, I wasn’t given an exact deadline but I knew it had to be done quickly. I worked on it until I felt it was ready to send. I would say it took me about a month from the first draft to the final. I am not sure if that timeframe is was too long or not. I felt like it was but I really struggled with finding those dance poses and stylizing them.
Process images:
VSU ART + DESIGN 