Wittliff Collections Festival

Project Details

The Wittliff Collections Festival brought together several creative disciplines under one roof, so the identity needed to feel broad enough to represent all of them without losing the regional character that made the event distinct. Working with Bill Wittliff and The Wittliff Collections, I developed a mark that connected the creative spirit of the festival with the landscape that has shaped so much of the work represented there.

The central image is a wild mustang containing a West Texas landscape based on a photograph I made during a road trip to Big Bend National Park. Bringing those two elements together gave the identity a sense of movement and place, while also making the mark personal to the project rather than relying on stock Western imagery.

The identity was built to work across the festival’s promotional materials but also needed to stand on its own as a recognizable symbol. The final mark gave the event a visual language rooted in Texas and the Southwest while still feeling contemporary enough to represent the range of writers, musicians, photographers and filmmakers involved.

This project remains one of the more important identity systems I developed because of the trust Bill Wittliff placed in the work and because it brought together design, photography and a subject that already had a strong connection to place.