The Austin City Limits Music Festival has been around for over a decade, bringing in over one hundred artists. It is something locals hold dear to their hearts, as Austin, Texas has a deep appreciation for music. Our goal was to create a new look as dynamic and eclectic as the festival itself. Drawing thousands of guests to Zilker Park for a two-weekend festival, the challenge was to simultaneously honor the heritage of the festival and music scene while also embracing a new vibrant era and energy in Austin.

Austin City Limits has been around ‘Since Forever’. Keeping that spirit in mind we wanted to create a comprehensive and cohesive identity system that created a new art style to work from every touchpoint of the ACL experience and promotion. We kept the love, purity, and spirit of what has made live music so special in Austin. This was not only something worth preserving, but passing along and pushing forward, in a way that only the Austin City Limits can.

Through the design, we wanted an intimate tie to our city, the places, the vibes, and the spirit that is uniquely Austin. This helped us create an identity system that only ACL Music Fest could own. Since the festival takes place in a park at the heart of Austin, there is a large local draw to the festival. The whole area around the park shuts down for both weekends, so the city feels the festival's presence.

Through stage banners, social ads, social videos, photography-style graphics, artist posters, merchandise, festival signs, website layout, and experiential ideas, we considered how we preserve the legacy of Austin City Limits while also recognizing where the city and our fans are headed.

Over the course of a few months, we worked to pull inspiration from Austin archives and music scenes from the past five decades. We used a collage photo overlay style and built a robust brand identity that can visually thread the needle across all communications, collateral, and environment.

Austin has brought together generations of music lovers and now ACL brings together all genres of music into one place for 2 weekends. The local scene has a love for music and outdoor activities, so this festival captures the city is about. We inserted classic Austin motifs hidden within the design, that only true Austinites recognized. Even a small parrot didn't go unnoticed by the ACL fans, quoting on social media, “who is making these flyers with the infamous ATX parrots”. As the music capital of the world, we wanted to design a festival that also preserved the weird, the history, and the spirit of Austin with a “High Art” style.