Hymn for the Sahara

A festival for meeting and connecting, for camel racing, music, art, dance, discussion and handmade products. For young and old, artist and beholder, locals and internationals, together under the stars in a mystical location.

In 2016, the festival took place from October 28 to 30, near M'Hamid El Ghizlane, Morocco. To create as much awareness and interest in the festival among potential visitors, we worked with Generous Minds and a team of local developers to create a completely new corporate identity and communication strategy. Here you can read how we translated the philosophy of 'Hymn for the Sahara' into a new visual style, a one-pager, a website and offline promotional material.

Central to Festival Taragalte is the celebration of nomadic culture. This culture has a unique aura, reflected for example in the repetition of colored patterns in the handmade products, and inspired by the freedom of the desert.

To capture this atmosphere in the visual communication style, coarse, loose brushstrokes and a handwritten, organic font were chosen for the titles. The headline of the design is the image that is first visible on the website. With photos from previous editions of the festival, stars in the background, essential text, local language and the distinctive brushstrokes, it creates a whole that shows the entire festival feel to the visitor at a glance. It is the end result of many experiments with photos, patterns and color, created in close consultation with the festival organizers.

A new website is more than a front, and takes time to build. Therefore, to introduce potential festival visitors to Festival Taragalte as quickly as possible, the decision was made to create an online teaser first, in the form of a temporary one-pager. The visitor can thus find out what Festival Taragalte is, get interested in going to the event and follow the developments through one page. The page features large photos of the festival, a review of previous editions and part of the lineup featuring well-known Moroccan artists. To stay informed, visitors can sign up for the newsletter.

But just being findable online is not enough. To draw attention to the festival and the website, posters and flyers have been created. The flyers respond to events that take place before the festival, moments where the festival is also promoted. For example on the event 'A Night of Desert Blues', a nomad night at Pllek Amsterdam

The next item on the agenda was to launch the full website. The sooner, the better. Since the development was done by Tunga, a freelance-based development company in Africa, the design was based on a Wordpress template. Tunga works this way more often, and so this was the best option to launch the website as soon as possible. On the website, visitors can order tickets and souvenirs, read about this year's festival and find all the information needed to go to Hymn for the Sahara prepared.

Always and everywhere the same style

Finally, it is important to maintain this visual style in all communications and communicate a uniform experience to their visitors. For this, they also had to look at the offline material used during the festival. Think of banners, map on the festival grounds, labels of products and possibly merchandise for the team and visitors such as shirts and bags.

To excite and appeal to new visitors, "Hymn for the Sahara: A Night of Desert Blues," was organized at pllek in Amsterdam. The event was a preview of the artists, food and drink, and overall vibe of the real festival in October. It was not only a meeting place for the wide variety of visitors, but also for our team at Unc Inc and the rest of the organization, including the developers from Morocco. We could not have celebrated better the launch of the new website for Festival Taragalte.