Open Art Folke

Every year, the artists, designers, and makers of Folkestone join forces to host a town-wide celebration where they showcase their work, open the doors to their studios, and reimagine streets, cafés, parks, and other unusual spaces.

Dubbed Open Art Folke, the initiative is Folkestone's first artist-led, grassroots art festival—established by a dedicated working group, of which I've been a core member since 2026. I provided strategic marketing advice to the committee and led everything to do with the 2026 print campaign. I also refreshed the Open Art's visual identity, redesigned their website from the ground up, designed dozens of assets, wrote and rewrote pages of copy, and helped shape the third edition of the festival.

The part that brought me the most satisfaction was articulating what Open Art Folke is all about, and how they aim to grow, to the general public, unfamiliar audiences, and artists who had not yet taken part in the festival.

Going further while staying local

To connect with Open Art's local audience, we knew digital alone wouldn't cut it. Building on the print work OAF had done in earlier years, we secured a budget for a major print campaign, and I led its creative direction and execution.

We landed on a printed programme as the hero of the campaign: with detailed info about each open studio, show, and performance, this accessible 56-page booklet acts as a guide for visitors, and as a beautiful keepsake for participating artists. Alongside the programme, I also designed a budget-friendly run of posters and leaflets.

The illustrations featured across all of these were created by Suze Lawrence, a brilliant local illustrator who took a rather expansive brief and turned it into a gestural, harmonious drawing that symbolises the theme for Open Art Folke 2026: Art This Way. Bringing the print campaign to life was a major group effort, and special thanks go to Folkestone Printing for, well, printing; Sangmin Cha and Simon Rickard for their help with gathering content and copy-editing; and Steven Aaron Williams for support with editing and for encouraging me to keep going till the final stretch.

A website as the backbone

Among all the ways in which Open Art Folke shares their story with the world, their website was what I felt had the most room for improvement. The redesign I gave it focuses on three things: highlighting the great imagery collected over the years, giving sponsors a dedicated space, and dressing Open Art in the most timeless and bold design possible so that their efforts can be recognised, now and in the future, from a mile away.

I built it using a combination of handwritten HTML and CSS, a little help from Claude Code where PHP and JavaScript were unavoidable, along with a maniacal healthy amount of attention to the tiniest details. Its content rests on the shoulders of the fabulous Kirby CMS—whose team was incredibly kind and funded our license—and Fortrabbit's fuss-free hosting infrastructure.

See it for yourself, visit openartfolke.com.

A new brand identity for Open Art Folke

By the time I joined the committee, OAF already had a strong identity which was well recognised around town. The team had also already invested in branded merch that they wanted to continue using (from handmade badges to signage and t-shirts).

Rather than ditch all their hard work and start over, I went for a lighter approach: I polished the logo, kept the typeface almost identical but added a second choice for body copy, and extended the original colour palette into a more versatile gamut that runs from light and playful to serious and grown-up, across branded and neutral tones. The result lends itself well to everything the festival might need now, and in coming years: from press releases and social media content to wall labels, posters, tote bags, and who knows what else.

Experiments and work in progress

A lot of my work on the third edition of the festival was intuitive and iterative throughout, and much of it happened behind the scenes. For example, some of the things I designed were only seen by a select few as they were made for specific interim events, including flyers, social media templates, and an outreach-friendly "business card".