Woodland Art Fair: Bright and Retro

Each year, Lexington Art League partners with Lexington's Parks and Recreation to host their premiere annual event, the Woodland Art Fair. The two-day festival features over 200 local and traveling artists, craftspeople, local food vendors, craft beer, and musical entertainment. We volunteered to head up the graphic work as a sponsor for the event.

We outfitted our client with everything a fair of this size would need: custom mid-century style illustrations, wayfinding signage, maps, schedules, and merchandise.

A Lexington Tradition, With Nostalgic Flair

In conceptualizing a look for the fair, we wanted to invoke an idyllic summer afternoon spent in Woodland Park. We decided on a style hinged on midcentury aesthetics: the quintessential, picturesque depictions of a simpler, bygone era, alluding to the style of greats like Charley Harper and Aurelius Battaglia. We used abstract stylization and bold design to turn a craft fair into a bucolic slice of life from a 1960's postcard.

Maps, Banners, Signs & Much More

Devising a system for visitors to navigate the overwhelming amount of vendors and attractions at the Woodland Art Fair has challenged their team for years. In addition to creating a visual guide and illustration style, we created a structure and layout for their maps and various collateral that still supports text-heavy content without sacrificing the visual identity we established for the fair.

Woodland at Dusk

Each year, the Woodland Art Fair aesthetic gets a facelift, evolving to a pattern of colors and figures unique to every new year, while still maintaining consistency with the previous ones, like a series. We revamp the previous year's designs and create new illustrations and colorways to represent the fresh evening air of Woodland Park.

We loved getting out there with local artists and vendors such as Crafted Social, Dana Rogers Photography, and many others (follow #woodlandartfair on Instagram to see more!).