Manifest Festival ’13

Columbia College Chicago’s annual end of the year urban arts festival, Manifest, is a student-powered event and features graduating students’ showcases, live musical performances, film screenings, gallery shows, lectures, readings, and various other activities.

The concept for the campaign was a visualization of the word layers, and how many identities an individual may have. I drew inspiration from my personal identities as an immigrant, Vietnamese woman who was raised in Oklahoma City. Everyone I met at Columbia had such intricate identities, too, and I felt the best way to showcase this concept was to design a brand that utilized different mediums such as photography, illustration, iconography, and typography together in a dynamic and fun way.

The result is a colorful, customizable identity that allows you to create individual pieces that stand out on their own, and work perfectly together.

When Manifest was founded, the star was chosen as the symbol to represent all the wildly creative and talented students that graduate from Columbia. Instead of a solid shape, I set out to reimagine a star that utilized the constellation of solid and outlined shapes and linework.