River & Sky Book
To celebrate River & Sky’s history, I worked with the festival to design a book documenting its artists, performances, stories and evolution over the years.
The project combined editorial design, typography, photography, illustration, maps and information graphics into a single publication.
Unlike a typical promotional piece, the book needed to function as both an archival record and an engaging visual experience.
The challenge was to make a large amount of historical information approachable without reducing the richness and complexity of the festival’s story.
Client
River & Sky Music and Camping Festival
Disciplines
Branding & Identity, Illustration, Editorial & Print
Exploration
The archive contained a huge amount of material spanning multiple years, artists, venues and disciplines. Presented without a strong hierarchy, that information could easily become overwhelming. The book therefore needed to establish a clear editorial structure that allowed readers to move through the history chronologically while still discovering individual stories, artists and moments along the way.
It also needed to feel like River & Sky—not simply a historical document, but an extension of the festival’s creative personality.
Denouement – The Untangling
The editorial system was built around a balance between structure and whimsy. Typography, colour and recurring graphic elements establish a consistent framework throughout the book, while maps, illustrations, photography and supporting graphics provide visual breaks and additional ways into the content.
Working with copywriters & photographers, information was grouped and prioritized so that readers could understand the broader story of the festival while still being able to pause on individual artists, performances and moments.
The result is a publication that treats the festival’s history not simply as information to be documented, but as a story to be explored.
I created maps, icons and symbols to help the end user navigate the various features of the book, one of which included a choose your own adventure style story as footnotes that leads users on an adventure through the book.
