Ravinia Chicago Pride participation with Grand Marshal Lea Delaria ("Big Boo", Orange is the New Black)

Role: Art Direction, Design, and Project Manager
Team: Communications Director, Creative Director, Photographer, and Social Media Manager

Ravinia’s support team leading the 2017 Chicago Pride Parade with Grand Marshal Lea Delaria ("Big Boo", Orange is the New Black)

Making a statement

Ravinia is the oldest outdoor music festival in the United States, with a series of outdoor concerts and performances held every summer from June to September. In 2017, Ravinia had a unique opportunity to sponsor the grand marshall of Chicago’s Pride Parade which included designing a suite of pieces for the 1,000,000+ crowd.

Project Scope: Logo, Signage, Megaphone wrap, Banners, Flags, T-shirts, Tank tops, Stickers, Tattoos, and Hats

Ravinia’s participation in the event created an opportunity to reach a new audience. Ravinia’s audience typically skewed older, white, affluent, and resided within 5 miles of the venue. Ravinia’s growing mission was to expand to younger, more diverse audiences.

Creative Director initial planning and brainstorming sketches used to inform the development of the final logo.

Final logo design

The logo and branding for this event presented an interesting challenge. Creating a logo that represents Ravinia as a music venue that supports the LGTBQ+ community and resonates with the mission of the Pride Parade.

The tagline “Listen to Love” was created to combine the support and statement Ravinia wanted to make while still related to music.

Inspiration for the logo came from a sound board equalizer. The equalizer bars form a heart representing support and love. The gradient rainbow represents the Pride Flag and mirrors the look and feel of equalizers. The tag line positioned in the center cuts aways at the equalizer bars giving the illusion of movement of the sounds bars. This illusion of movement also created a feeling of energy. The Pride Parade as a whole is a massive display of energy, heart and soul. This logo captured the spirit and essence of the event and its participants. The materials were extremely well received by the parade’s participants. The giveaway inventory picked for the event all targeted the younger audience and included tank tops, “trucker” hats, glitter press-on tattoos, and stickers.

Pride participant catches a Ravinia “Listen to Love” t-shirt from the Grand Marshal.

Grand Marshal Lea Delaria ("Big Boo", Orange is the New Black) gives away Ravinia “swag”.

The parade team inventory spanned several large containers filling an entire trolley floor to ceiling. The Ravinia team rode for 4-miles of the 20-mile long route. The team returned to Ravinia HQ with empty containers.