The Last Round
A case study on concerts, I researched and developed concepts for a concert tour's brand and merchandise. The Last Round represents a theoretical final tour of an iconic rock band.
Task
Concert tours always have an identity associated with them. I wanted to design a brand system for a fantasy concert tour without using any of the music artist's original branding, logos, or imagery.
Idea
As someone who frequently attends concerts, I've found an affection for the branding, artwork, and design of a lot of different tours. The Last Round is centered around the rock band "Guns N' Roses" and an imagined final tour. The name is ambiguous and could represent different ideas, but ultimately it represents the last round for the band.
This illustrated logo takes from the imagery of Rock and Roll music using skulls and bones. The concept comes from an initial idea of centering a skull around three roses. The three roses would represent the original three band members who are still present in the current touring band. I chose complementary colors with the red that was chosen for the rose illustrations. I ultimately chose to frame the logo within a shape that is reminiscent of a craft beer logo, which also lives within the idea of the name The Last Round as well. I chose to avoid using an existing imagery from the band's current brand identity so that this logo and branding could exist independently.
Seen here are the initial sketches and concepts for the logo.
With a finalized logo, the design system was created. A custom typeface was hand drawn, inspired by craft beer logos, for the words THE LAST ROUND.
I designed two different posters for this tour. The first, is a general tour advertisement. These posters are used to visualize what cities will be visited during this concert tour. A QR Code is also included with a sample playlist of the songs that you would hear during a concert on The Last Round tour. The second poster is designed specifically for a concert occuring in the City of Boston, MA.
Boston, MA is such a historic city that there were numerous ideas to draw from. I chose the George Washington Equestrian statue as my inspiration and drew the statue while adding skeletal elements. The typography treatment uses my secondary typeface, and the colors are patriotic in tone, drawing inspiration from the birthplace of America.
