When I had the opportunity to design the family of identities for South by Southwest in 2009 they were hoping to "get back to their roots" for lack of a better term. As the festival has grown over the years they have struggled with conveying the sense of "D.I.Y." that codified the festival in the early years.
In order to convey this it seemed natural to create a series of relatively naive hand-drawn hands holding representative, quickly read icons. Additionally a custom typeface was created to compliment the style of the arms and hands to use for headlines and titles across all applications of the identity system.
Thankfully they were so happy with the outcome of our collaboration they returned to Sibley/Peteet for the branding of the festival the following year.
South by Southwest is an annual conference that’s been held in Austin, Texas, since 1987. Originally a Music conference focused on bringing attention to the Austin music scene, the event has expanded to cover Film and Interactive topics and events while playing host to over 17,000 attendees from all over the world.