A new visual identity was needed to capture the diversity, global energy, and cultural significance of the long-standing festival.
By delivering a 360-degree rebrand, the project accelerated global promotional sales and strengthened the festival’s presence worldwide.
the lollapalooza experience
Lollapalooza is one of the world’s largest and most recognized music festivals, spanning eight international cities. The festival celebrates an eclectic mix of rock, hip hop, electronic, indie, punk, and more, attracting hundreds of thousands of attendees each year.
Role: Lead Creative
Focus: Global Rebrand / Illustration
Goal:
Modernize the festival’s identity while preserving its eclectic and high-energy spirit.
Build a scalable system that adapts to all international markets while maintaining brand integrity.
Develop artwork flexible enough for use across web, app UI, merch, ticketing, signage, and massive stage designs.
Balance hyper-local cultural flavors with global brand consistency.
Craft visuals that resonate across diverse music genres while being instantly recognizable as “Lollapalooza.”
Challenge:
The existing brand identity felt fragmented, outdated, and inconsistent across markets.
Needed to create a flexible design system, while maintaining a consistent core identity.
The brand had to represent diverse music genres, cultural differences, and a global audience, while still evoking the festival's raw energy and personality.
Deliver artwork scalable for massive stage environments, merch, digital platforms, print, motion, and broadcast.
Solve for color harmonies, typography, character design, and layout differences unique to each city.
LET’S START WITH A MOODBOARD
Mood: Neon, Street Art, Primitivism, Voltage, Movement, Energy, Urban Signs.
Inspired by the electric energy of live music, youth culture, and the raw aesthetic of streetwear graphics.
Each city received a bespoke color palette and localized graphic motifs representing local culture while maintaining global consistency.
Each city and country required its own distinct color palette that resonated with local culture while maintaining global brand consistency. The goal was to create an adaptable color system that could flex across websites, stage displays, merchandise, signage, and digital media, yet still feel unmistakably “Lollapalooza.”
Began by creating a set of foundational color palettes that could support the brand’s high-energy, eclectic spirit.
Researched local aesthetics, cultural color symbolism, street art, and festival atmospheres for each city to inform palette development.
Built graphic mockups and concept boards to test how colors functioned across the website UI, interactive elements, environmental graphics, and print collateral.
Carefully balanced colors to work harmoniously with the existing logo structures, typography, and character artwork, ensuring vibrancy without visual overload.
Ensured that the palettes were accessible, with strong contrast for legibility in both digital and physical formats.
Each city received a primary, secondary, and accent palette tailored to its unique vibe.
Applied the color system to:
Web and mobile UI (backgrounds, buttons, navigation, schedules)
Character and Prop designs
Stage designs, entrance arches, signage, and banners
Branded merchandise and VIP packages
Digital marketing, motion graphics, and broadcast elements
Developed a color usage guide within the overall brand toolkit to ensure consistency across internal teams, marketing partners, and licensees.
The city-specific color palettes created a sense of local identity and ownership for festival-goers while remaining part of a unified, global Lollapalooza experience.
The adaptable palette system allowed the brand to express itself flexibly across mediums, from intimate mobile screens to massive stage scrims, without losing clarity or impact.
This approach became a defining part of the Lollapalooza design language, instantly recognizable whether in Chicago, Paris, São Paulo, or Berlin.
At the heart of the design system is a set of illustrative characters, each embodying a different music genre, subculture, and attitude. These figures became the visual storytellers of the brand, representing the dynamic energy that music evokes and the primal, universal urge to move and connect through sound.
The characters were designed to be both playful and iconic, scalable from a mobile app screen to a 60-foot stage backdrop.
Each festival location featured character variants with color palettes and styling customized to its country or region.
The characters became central to the festival’s identity, featured on tickets, merch, web, mobile, billboards, and stage installations.
Each country and city was given its own background, color palette, and designed specific for the region:
Hipódromo de San Isidro, Argentina
Santiago, Chile
Chicago, United States
São Paulo, Brazil
Berlin, Germany
Paris, France
Stockholm, Sweden
Despite catering to each country’s unique culture and aesthetic preferences, the brand remained consist, tying the entire experience together globally.
Designed a web-based promotional microsite featuring interactive games, ticket giveaways, and merch promotions.
Redesigned the festival app UI, incorporating site maps, event schedules, and branded social photo filters.
Each city’s website featured tailored artwork, typography, and color systems, built within a globally consistent UX framework.
Delivered motion graphics for digital campaigns, broadcast spots, and social content.
Developed motion graphics packages for use across web, television, and social media.
UI work focused on clarity despite the high-energy visuals, balancing vibrant artwork with functional UX patterns for the mobile app and event websites.
Interactive site maps, real-time schedules, and photo filter overlays were all designed in sync with the brand’s updated identity
Created the UI for the Lollapalooza mobile app, featuring:
Interactive site maps
Event schedules with real-time updates
Branded photo filters for social sharing
Designed the app to reflect each city’s unique festival look while maintaining a unified experience for attendees.
Directed and illustrated motion graphics packages for use in international TV spots, online ads, and promotional videos.
Extended the illustration system into animation, allowing characters to move with the same energy as the live performances they represent.
Designed the artwork for major experiential touchpoints including:
Front entrance gateways
Main stage scrims and backdrops
Banners, city billboards, and public transit wraps
Focused on delivering an entrance experience that was both immersive and instantly recognizable, welcoming visitors into the world of Lollapalooza.
The global rebrand launched in 2013 and directly contributed to an increase in promotional sales, sponsorship engagement, and merchandise revenue.
Created a consistent yet flexible brand language adopted across 7 global festivals.
Helped the festival feel more inclusive by representing a wide spectrum of music genres, cultures, and fan identities.
Strengthened partnerships with major global sponsors through co-branded asset systems that respected both brand guidelines.
Elevated the fan experience from ticket purchase through to on-site, digital, and post-event engagement.Key Contributions:
Creative Direction: Led concept development, illustration systems, and full brand rollout.
Illustration Systems: Created a modular character system reflecting musical diversity and cultural relevance.
Digital Experience: Directed UX/UI design for websites, promotional microsites, and the festival app.
Motion Design: Delivered international ad spots, countdowns, and promotional video packages.
Experiential Branding: Led the design for massive stage graphics, wayfinding, environmental displays, and festival entrances.
Merch & Product: Designed retail merchandise, ticket packs, and collectible products aligned with the brand.
Brand Systems: Developed flexible brand guidelines for internal teams and international partnersCore Deliverables:
Global brand system with illustration, character design, typography, and color palettes.
UI/UX design for websites, microsites, and mobile app.
Merchandising systems and VIP ticket packaging.
Environmental graphics, signage, and large-format stage design.
Motion design for TV, web, and live-event projections.
Brand toolkits for internal teams, external vendors, and sponsor co-branding.