Background
The Huangguoshu International Beer Festival was first held in the famous Huangguoshu National Park of China in 2015. It was the first one of beer festivals that is held at the national 5A tourist attraction in China. famous Huangguoshu National Park of China is a national key scenic spot, located in Anshun City, in the southwest of Guizhou Province. It was ranked as the largest waterfall group in the world by the Shanghai China Records Headquarters, and was icollected in the world’s record of the Guinness Book of Records. Anshun has good urban environment, rich cultural heritage and tourism resources. Beer is borderless, passion belongs to the world. The first Huangguoshu International Beer Festival is to use beer as a communication media, and use the Huangguoshu waterfall as a bridge to set up an international tourism platform that brings Huangguoshu to the world; it is to utilize the high quality tourism resources of Anshun to create new tourism industry formats in an international perspective, first-class and high standards; and to integrate food, accommodation, transportation, travel, shopping and entertainment, the six main elements of tourism to make Anshun to be an international tourism destination, and make Huangguoshu to be a global resorts . The Huangguoshu International Beer Festival is built into a tourism festival that attracts tourists from home and abroad. It is an open and active festival to expand international communication and corporation. It is a cultural festival that creates a new atmosphere for humanities and enjoyment; it accelerates building the “worldwide known and domestic First-class “tourist destinations and leisure resorts”, and creates a “upgraded versions” of tourism. The first Huangguoshu International Beer Festival was a grand event that successfully promoted, exhibited, and publicized Anshun; it is also a grand event that promoted friendship with friends from all over the world, strengthened cooperation and communication, and helped Anshun improved rapidly.
The positioning of the first Huangguoshu International Beer Festival was “eating, drinking, entertainment” and “a festival for tourists and citizens”. Beer Festival highlights “internationalization” and also emphasizes “popularization”. The three sections of international beer, international cuisine, and international performance teams combine “internationalization” and “popularity” perfectly so that everyone can participate.
This case was mainly entrusted by the Huangguoshu National Park of China Management Committee to create a logo for the Huangguoshu International Beer Festival. The logo needs to be unique comparing to the logos of other Beer Festivals in China. The Beer festival is aimed at more widely recommending the tourism of Anshun. Therefore, it is necessary to properly consider the features of Huangguoshu National Park of China. The elements of the waterfall should be considered to add into the logo for it to be more unique.
The logo has a simple structure, and it is lively and concrete. The overall impression of the logo is like a large beer mug filled in beer for inviting guests to gather here all over the world; and it also transmits the message that Huangguoshu International Beer Festival is a unique beer party. Above, the beer foam overflowing from the mug represents the cloud flies over Huangguoshu National Park of China; the part dripping down along the mug is just like spilled beer as well as the Huangguoshu waterfall. This idea just combines the elements of beer and waterfall into one. The color of the logo is a simple and neat style, without excessive rendering or complex and variegated colors. Instead, it accurately conveys the original environment color of the Huangguoshu National Park of China.
Select the basic element of the Huangguoshu Tourism Logo — waterfall shape, and add a handle of beer mugs on both sides of the waterfall shape, which means that well-known Chinese and foreign beer brands come to the Huangguoshu International Beer Festival; it also implies that visitors from all over the world can not only appreciate the natural waterfall, but also can join in the passionate festival. The color of the upper part of the logo is as close as possible to the natural tones of the Huangguoshu National Park of China — green, while blending the main color of the beer — yellow. The two colors are harmoniously combined; the lower part of the logo is the name of the beer festival in Chinese and English. The English name is highlighted in two colors, red and blue, so that the colors of the entire logo are richer, more vivid and brighter. The main shape of the logo is made by Chinese traditional calligraphy, it conveys that the festival is held in the famous scenic spots of the ancient eastern country.
Rough two was finally selected as the logo of the Huangguoshu International Beer Festival.
The main advantages of draft two was that the design combined the majestic scenery of Huangguoshu waterfall with the passion of the Oktoberfest. The design skillfully applied the logo of Huangguoshu National Park of China. on the other hand, I separated the logo into two beer mugs. The combination of many elements makes it be the ultimate logo of the festival. Although the draft one is good as well, the overall logo is too concrete. It looks more like a child’s brand rather than a logo of a beer festival. It does not represent the characteristics of the waterfall and the beer: Passion, and it is not dynamic or vivid comparing with rough two.
Chanllenge
The biggest challenge of the case is no enough time for researching and design. From the beginning of thinking to the final logo version was finalized in only two days. Before, the logo design of the Huangguoshu International Beer Festival was open to the society. After more than a month of collection, there was no logo design satisfactory. At that time, only one month left before the opening ceremony of the festival. If there was no logo, all the other design of the festival and the arrangement will not be able to be carried out in time, and the festival might be aborted. I was responsible for the planning of the the festival. In such an emergency, the organizer requested me to assist in the creative design the logo. At the beginning, I directed a graphic designer to design, but the results can not satisfy me. In the end, I chose to design myself. From the pencil rough to the final digital rough, it took me only two days.
What I Learned
From the preparations for the festival to the final success, the preparation time for each part of the first Huangguoshu International Beer Festival is very limited, and many issues are decided in a rush. This is not a good example of preparation for a festival or an activity. Therefore, the first beer festival ended up with some regrets. In the preparation stage of the 2nd first Huangguoshu International Beer Festival, the organizer learned the lessons from the past, and started preparation very early. Before the 3rd first Huangguoshu International Beer Festival opened, the preparations of each part have been quite complete, and the organizer has established a complete set of festival preparation workbooks, which provides a very comprehensive and effective work method for the preparation of the festival.
From the first Huangguoshu International Beer Festival, I learned a lot of experience. The most important thing is that the festival is always a time-countdown event. It is very necessary to establish a work calendar at the very beginning of preparation, and fully consider the time need of each part. Otherwise it can only fail or leave regrets.