Tephra Fine Arts Festival (2017)

Optimizing Event Experience & Wayfinding Through Print and Color

The Tephra Fine Arts Festival (formerly, the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival) is ranked among one of the top 5 outdoor art festivals across the nation, taking place every year in May at Reston Town Center, a DC suburb in Northern Virginia. The fair is in its 46th year, and sees 30,000 people over the course of the three day weekend, where there are sponsored events and performances in addition to the 200 visiting artist booths. Proceeds benefit Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (formerly known as Greater Reston Arts Center) and their year-round initiatives for youth art education.

Team & Roles

For this project, I served as a graphic design intern. I helped select the art for marketing, filled content, made choices on typography and layout.

Deliverables

Festival Booklet
Street Banner
13 Magazine Advertisements
2 Directory posters
Digital Ads and Banners

Image courtesy / Renner / Greater Reston Arts Center

**Artist Listing, Before.** The Artist listing comprises the largest section of the booklet, where it lists the attending artists alphabetically along with where they’re from, their contact, art medium, and where you can find them at the festival.

**Artist Listing, After.** The Artist listing comprises the largest section of the booklet, where it lists the attending artists alphabetically along with where they’re from, their contact, art medium, and where you can find them at the festival.

According to a 2018 Survey by artfaircalendar.com[see study], 41.25% of those who attend art fairs do so because they “love to see great art and to travel to different areas”. In addition, 29.52% love entertainment and browsing, and another 25.73% are looking to purchase something unique for their home or office.

Thus, we can gather that many visitors do not have a particular goal or artist in mind. They might be entirely new to the area, and are purely aiming for a relaxing stroll. This makes me wonder—how can we elevate the art fair experience? They wonder, “where am I and what am I looking for?” The key to great wayfinding and experience is to give the viewer information that they didn’t know they were looking for.

The Problem

Users need a way to browse the festival and see what's around without having to walk the entirety of it. The Festival booklet contains an Artist Directory, providing information on each artist. For each artist listing, there's the artist/artists name, collaborators, their hometown, what booth they can be found, their website, and a thumbnail image. The listing is sorted by artist last name, and takes up about 8 full page spreads.

The minimum task was to update the previous years indesign file and prepare for production. Any other design recommendations were open to consideration. Considering it had been many years since a visual overhaul, I found the opportunity also make design changes that would improve the usability of the printed booklet.

Findings

In every design project, every change should have more than just aesthetic purpose, but should improve usability and should reflect back to the main purpose of the deliverable. What is this being used for? Who is using it? What does the user expect to gain from using it? What are they doing when they use it?

In 2017, it was found that through interviews that the booklet had an opportunity to be of greater use to those who are using it, in person, at the festival. Users attending this event did not come necessarily knowing what art they wanted to buy and who they wanted to visit— most visitors came for a stroll, and anything that catches their eye would be a bonus.