paul stanton

Project Overview

For a student project I was tasked with making a variety of deliverable for a conference: the conference brochure/proceedings, attendee badge, table tents to advertise in the dining hall, and an ad for the next year’s conference to run on the website.

Brand Design Process

I invented a local literature convention using research of similar conventions. I chose Oklahoma City because it does not currently have a fantasy literature convention, and chose a venue, guests, and sponsors based on what literature conventions in similar-sized cities had.

The name of the convention comes from “Sword and Sorcery”—a sub-genre of fantasy literature popular in the late 20th century. The branding is intended to feel both modern and classic.

I used black-and-white ink illustrations for my main visual motif. These are not actually period appropriate to the 80s and 90s fantasy that the title evokes (which tended towards lurid and colorful oil paintings). However, the brand is not supposed to be pure nostalgia, but rather a novel re-imagining of the genre’s roots in a modern aesthetic.

The illustration style feels old—being particularly reminiscent of early roleplaying game manual illustrations—while actually conforming to modern minimalist tendencies within the genre. Purely nostalgic brands, in my opinion, do not have nearly the broad appeal as brands that use nostalgia as a jumping off point but incorporate more cutting edge sensibilities.

I created a logo and brandmark in Illustrator that matched the visual style of the illustrations used. The letters are made up of smoke emerging from a genie’s lamp and sit upon a sword banner. The brandmark, used wherever there is need for a square design or the main logo will not fit, is a simple “S&S” in the same smoke-letter style.

Deliverables

Reflection & Takeaways

Building a consistent design system from scratch and implementing it across a variety of deliverables was a valuable experience.

The main limitation I set for myself was creating a conference that felt real to the constraints of similar actually existing events. This helped the project feel grounded.

The design system, while still rough, is consistent across deliverables and is a good proof-of-concept that could be developed by a design team into a coherent brand.