La Rumeur
Illustration of a festival about Urban Legends
LA RUMEUR is a fictional festival exploring urban legends. Held once a year in the French town of Fontenay-aux-Roses, it is aimed at a curious audience who need not be experts. With its educational and entertaining focus, our festival offers a wide range of exhibitions, talks and workshops. As a comic book author and graphic designer, I wanted to explore this concept in depth, combining illustrations of the festival, publications and the programme to create a visual world that subverts traditional conventions of information presentation.
Time Period
2021
Mission
Branding
Layout
Illustration
Kind of project
Personal project
Tools
Adobe Software
Brief and challenge
Objective: To create event-related content and an associated visual identity, namely: to come up with a name, define all the events and the programme, then draft all the written content, create 10 promotional posters, an information leaflet featuring an article and the programme, and a random urban legend generator. An illustration of a festival will also need to be produced.
Challenge: To develop a consistent visual identity across multiple formats, including print and web.
Creative process
01. A NEWSPAPER
Much of my visual communication will revolve around parodying the newspaper. As this medium is regarded as a powerful symbol of top-down communication, it represents a reliable source of information, the custodian of absolute truth.
So, what could be better than subverting it?
02. COLORS AND TYPOGRAPHY
The IBM Plex typeface family is the star of our festival. Indeed, the variety of its styles and weights gives us great creative freedom, whilst ensuring consistency and aesthetic appeal for our event.
As for the colours, I’ve opted for a range of grey shades: this echoes the look of printed newspapers, whilst creating an unsettling atmosphere.
BLACK
GREY
WHITE
03. ILLUSTRATION OF A FESTIVAL
After much research, I decided to combine textured vector illustrations with a cartoonish graphic style. As the theme of our festival is urban legends, what could be better than pairing it with a comic-book style?
Deliverables
01. POSTERS
These ten posters enable us to promote the LA RUMEUR festival. The white posters are a parody of a tabloid newspaper, featuring sensational headlines and news stories! They depict well-known urban legends in comic-strip form and serve as general advertising for our festival.
The black posters, meanwhile, provide details of the various upcoming events. These events may include talks, exhibitions or screenings of documentary films. The festival’s artwork adds a personal and eerie touch to the event.
Promotional posters
Above: It is reported that large numbers of vipers have invaded a quiet town in France, terrorising its residents.
Events Posters
Above: This talk, presented by Yassine El Halmoui, explores the importance of science in the world of urban legends.
02. THE NEWSPAPER
Comprising around twenty pages, this newspaper features a programme, a map and a long feature article on internet legends. I draw inspiration from traditional layouts and transform them into intrusive designs. Just as these legends invade your privacy via your computer, the newspaper’s illustrations spill out of the frame to command your attention.
In an open A2 format, the magazine is printed on 80 g/m² Newspaper print paper.
03. THE RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR
Urban legends are based on the sociological phenomenon of rumour, playing on human fears in line with the era and culture in which they arise. To put it simply, we can identify several stages in the telling of an urban legend.
My random generator will combine these two elements to create random and absurd urban legends. Using a combination of technologies (CSS3/HTML5 and PHP), this web page offers a playful and interactive exploration of the excesses of misinformation.
Below, the random generator in action:
Result
The “RUMEUR” festival actually explores the subject of information and the sociological processes that keep legends alive. By understanding the mechanisms that shape these narratives, we gain a new tool for analysing our environment.
As someone passionate about these themes, creating a festival centred on this subject would be an excellent initiative, and I would be delighted to develop its visual identity. I am therefore creating illustration of a festival, visual identity, a print magazine and a web version. You can view my illustration work on my Instagram page @leplankeur !
Did you like this project?
You might like the website I designed for Raining Cats Films, where the dark aesthetic of its visual identity is reminiscent of the dark, illustrated world of the ‘La Rumeur’ festival…