Cheltenham Festivals graphic identity and illustrations unveiled

Michelle Thompson has created the illustrations and graphic identity for this year’s Cheltenham Festivals. The Cheltenham Festivals umbrella encompasses Cheltenham Jazz Festival, The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, Cheltenham Music Festival, The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival; and Michelle’s designs aim to differentiate each event while creating a cohesive look and feel across the series.

“When I think of Cheltenham Festivals I think of the outdoors, energy, wonder and extremes. Each Festival has its own character though and so I wanted to create a different atmosphere for each piece of Festival artwork,” says Michelle. “The four images had to work in different formats (for example on the brochure cover and online) and they had to have a unifying narrative across all the designs so I worked on all of the images together to make sure they worked as a set. Each design has its own distinct colour scheme but the combination of traditional and modern, old and new elements help to link the images together.”

The images were created using a number of techniques including paint and ink, scanned physical materials and photography and photographs taken by Michelle. These were then worked up digitally.

The Cheltenham festivals run from April until October this year. For full information visit the festival site here.