Almost 90,000 fans from all over the world descend on Nashville for the CMA Music Festival for a week in June.
The branding of country music’s largest party
With 11 different stages, over 500 artists, activities, shopping and food areas – CMA Music Fest has a huge need for branding. ST8MNT was honored to design the key art, stage/area identity system, website, environment needs, stage graphics, directional signage, badges, graphics and maps for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 festival.
With stages and activities throughout downtown at different venues and streets – involving different sponsors and offerings – there was a need for a brand hierarchy system.
A system that works for fans and sponsors
The key art takes on a look of hot metal letterpress type that we built in a 3d environment, printed over with the CMA Music Fest logo; and printed applications of the metal type were used for the different stage environments focusing on the printed show poster history of country music. Stage and area logos, with a color system and mark language, were created to brand all the different locations as sanctioned CMA Fest spots, yet have some flexibility and uniqueness for each experience.
ST8MNT created an energetic system that was fun and varied, yet could live within the main brand system authentically. The striking colors and mark system made for easier wayfinding throughout downtown for fans, plus served the marketing objectives of being able to clearly tout different offerings and showcase and connect different sponsors to their respective properties. And our design system met the need for having flexibility to update only some of the stages for 2016 and 2017 sponsors and location changes.
An intense event map was illustrated to ensure 90,000 visitors can find their way
CMAfest.com
Organizing a ton of ever-changing info for mobile, and keeping it fun
When we began to redesign the website, we not only refreshed the look but completely restructured and looked at long-term user capabilities. The new and improved CMA Music Fest website is custom WordPress with mobile-first mentality and celebrates the high energy CMA Music Fest atmosphere in a clean and easy-to-navigate website layout. With the festival selling out well in advance each year, the main objective for the site is to inform fans on all the artists and their schedules (changing right up to the last minute), as well as all the free, open activities to all.
Clear stage sorting, constant Twitter updates, integrations with Aloompa’s festival app for robust scheduling, easy to use FAQs, and heavy sponsor presentation are just some of the bells and whistles.
Following the festival, we easily designed a new skin on the site to be cohesive with ABC’s airing of the festival with their TV key art.
