An autumnal brand that takes inspiration from vintage travel artwork

A workhorse of a website that sits at the centre of the success of the Festival’s launch

The Brief

The Derwent Valley and Central Highlands Tourism Association (DVCHTA) asked us to create a brand logo and website for showcasing the events of their first Tasmanian Autumn Festival. The Tasmanian Autumn Festival celebrates the history, culture and nature of the Derwent Valley and Central Highlands, bringing together tourism operators, cafes & restaurants, vineyards & distilleries, and stores in the area to host activities, workshops and autumn-themed events. Autumn is a unique time in the area with vibrant foliage and landscapes on show.

The team had already put together a name and slogan - Tasmanian Autumn Festival: Unquestionably Cool, and they needed a logo to capture the atmosphere of the festivities, and represent autumn in the area.

They also needed a website, for people to learn about the festival, see what events are happening and access information like the trails and other features of the festival.

The website needed to have specific features like an events management system so the DVCHTA team could post events, links for people to find further information about the area, email newsletter signup and embedded maps.

With this project, we really needed to find the balance between a beautiful and functional website and meeting the tight timeframe. We facilitated conversations with the team at the Tasmanian Autumn Festival around their priorities, and what was immediately required, and what might be postponed as a future update for the Tasmanian Autumn Festival in 2025.

How Did We Do This?

Visual Identity that Communicates the Festival’s Culture 

From our initial meeting with the DVCHTA, we established a few essential things the logo needed to communicate: 

1. The culture of the festival - it needed to feel fun, vibrant, welcoming and exciting. 

2. The logo needed to feel Tasmanian - and ideally reflect the area specifically. 

3. Unsurprisingly, as it's an Autumn festival, it needed to feel autumnal. 

Our client was inspired by the style of vintage holiday posters and we discussed this during our initial meeting. We used this as a starting point for our designs as a festival fits well under a holiday theme, the idea suited a fun and colourful design, and the historical events of the festival. 

After an initial meeting, we draft some designs to share with the client. A few different ideas can help our clients express what they like and don’t like about a design because they have something to compare to. From this feedback, we can uncover new priorities that the design must communicate. 

During this process, one idea we toyed with was a design using features from vintage Tasmanian apple crates, such as recreating a vintage-style font and creating a graphic that looked like a wooden crate. However whilst we loved the vintage style font, apple crates didn’t reflect the Derwent Valley and Central Highlands area.  

From this process, we continued with a design that used fonts with a vintage feel, reminiscent of a 1950s holiday poster. This style conveyed an aspirational and fun feeling. This design also used the Fagus leaves, as a distinct feature of autumn in the area is the “turning of the fagus” where the leaves turn distinct shades of rust, orange and gold. Unlike the apple crates, the Fagus leaves are a natural fit and make sense with this brand. 

After this meeting, we refined this design to a final logo, finalised in a style guide with logo variations, fonts, colours and fagus leaf graphic which we later used in a pattern across the website. 

Here’s a breakdown of the final design:

• It feels vibrant and exciting through the use of bright, contrasting colours. 

• The fonts are also bold, rounded and a vintage style. 

• We added the teal as shadows behind the text to help with a vintage feel but also add dimension to the design and make it pop. 

• The fagus leaves bring a specific reference to the area. The leaves are close in colour to the shades they turn, but also sit behind the text in a lighter colour to not overwhelm the design. 

The final design uses different colours and scales to create an order of importance, or hierarchy, so that the viewer’s eye goes to certain information first, second and so on. 

The hierarchy is: 

1. “Festival” - largest and bold font

2. “Autumn” - Second largest text, a bold clear font and darker orange

3. “Tasmanian” - vibrant blue contrasts a lot with the other colours that blend together more

4. Fagus graphic - A paler colour than the rest of the design and blends into the background due to the negative space in the leaves. 

5. “Unquestionably cool” - much smaller and blends with orange of festival 

Creating a Branded Website with user experience (UX) as a priority

After designing the visual identity, we extended this design to create a website with a consistent brand style. The website needed to feel fun and continue the vintage feel. The website incorporates the brand fonts and colours with new graphics like a dashed line similar to one you’d find on a map, and using the fagus leaves as a pattern. We also used round corners on images reminiscent of a vintage postcard. 

Extending the Brand through Website Design

Of course, the elements we created for the brand, the logo and fagus leaves, as well as their colour palette and fonts were used to create a website that was consistent with their brand identity. However, we also extended the brand and design elements to amplify that fun, vintage feel.

• The Dashed Line - This line runs down the page, helping to create movement and interest. Inspiration for this line came from the ones you see on maps. 

• Fagus Leaves - We extended the use of the Fagus leaves into a pattern to …

• Rounded Corners on Images

Website Navigation

The purpose of the website is to introduce people to the festival and then direct them to the listing of events. The website design reflects this. When arriving on the homepage users are met with an introduction about the festival and beautiful autumnal photos of the area. Scrolling past this on the homepage, visitors will see some featured events and are then directed to view all events happening. They can also easily access the “What's on” page and the “Trails” page from the main menu at the top of the website. 

The homepage is structured in clear sections with headings, short pieces of information and links for further information. This is designed for people to easily take in a summary of the festival and all the different information they may need like what the festival is, what events are happening, what are the trails, retail info, accommodation info, national park info and then general details at the end of the page. 

The website was organised this way so people can get the most important information straight away but if they are interested they can dive a little deeper and read more. 

Event Management System

When visitors land on the “What’s on page” they can navigate through the events of the festival. The events are listed via the event management system, allowing people to easily filter events by type, date or search by keyword. As the website is used by the Derwent Valley and Central Highlands Tourism Association (DVCHTA) team to post events, the system needed to be simple, manageable, integrate effectively with the website and have filtering capabilities. 

Website Optimised for Google 

Our website builds come with an SEO strategy to help the website be found by potential customers searching on Google. For the Tasmanian Autumn Festival, the website needed to show up for people searching for the festival on Google (“Tasmanian Autumn Festival”) but also for variations of this like “Autumn Festival New Norfolk” and “Tasmanian Festival”. We also wanted to capture the attention of people searching for “things to do in April in Tasmania” or “what's on in April in Tasmania”. 

With little opportunity in the short term to add additional content to reach these goals, we used ranking factors that also boosted the user experience and website navigation. These considerations in our strategy meant that we were both optimising for Google, but also for user experience.

All our websites come with an SEO keyword strategy and on-page SEO work built in. SEO isn’t a once-and-done thing so we set websites up so our clients are starting out on the best foot and in the right direction, and could, if they choose to, either engage us for ongoing SEO work or DIY the maintenance.

The Results

We love that this logo and website feel fun and reflect the history and nature of the region. The final visual identity is eye-catching due to its distinct fonts, colours and fagus leaf graphics. It has different elements that can be used effectively on their own and have been pulled out and used throughout the website design. 

From the time the website went live to the end of the festival at the end of April 2024 the website had over 25K visitors. The website also appears on the first page of Google for autumn festival-related searches such as “Tasmanian Autumn Festival”, “Autumn Festival” and “New Norfolk Autumn Festival”. It also appears on the first page for searches relating to Tasmania in Autumn such as “Autumn in Tasmania 2024” and “What’s on in Tasmania April 2024”. In the lead-up and period of the festival, the website was visible for a variety of searches for towns in the region, appearing on the first page of Google for “New Norfolk”.

Check out the final design at tasmanianautumnfestival.com.au and stay tuned for next year's festival.