Ladies Of Hip Hop: Event & Organisation Branding
It was an honor and a privilege to be asked by Ladies Of Hip Hop founder Michele Byrd to come up with a cohesive identity that could pull together the many aspects of the New York based organisation. What started as an annual festival, has grown into a year-round programme of female-powered performances, public talks, classes, events, podcasts, development training, etc. which provide artistic opportunities for girls and women in hip hop culture. LOHH is educating and cultivating hip hop's next generation of female leaders. Images and videos courtesy of LOHH.
The process: I think it's also worth explaining where my design inspiration for this project came from. I did some funky expressive script lettering for Michele some years ago for the LOHH festival (shown below), and our conversation around that little fun project grew into an idea to completely rebrand LOHH as an organisation. LOHH had become so much more than just the festival, and Michele wanted a bold overarching brand (shown above) to mark its ever-growing branches, sub-brands, programmes, productions and merchandise. I started by researching female designers, and more specifically, work with a direct connection to New York and its hip hop culture. This led me to combine four separate sources into one concept. I took the font Montserrat, by Argentinian designer Julieta Ulanovsky, and combined it with the stretch-to-fill typographic approaches of New York's queen of graphic design, Paula Scher, as well as the hip hop logo work of Eric Haze. As a way to visually connect all of the various sub-brands of LOHH, I used the minimal bars and circles of Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp as a graphic bridge. I hope this approach will allow for an infinite number of new sub-brands to be added as LOHH continues to grow.