Edisto Blackwater Boogie: Website Design, Development, & Hosting, Logo Design & Branding

What We Did For Them: Website Design, Website Development, Website Hosting, Logo Design & Branding, Print & Digital Graphic Design, Content Writing, Social Media Management 

Industry: Nonprofit

The Edisto Blackwater Boogie was a unique project and involved the efforts of several different members of the community. We got involved when one of our current clients asked if we could help with designing and creating a website. Ultimately, we ended up as a part of the festival committee and offered to help sponsor the event by donating all marketing services.

The Logo

When creating the logo for the Edisto Blackwater Boogie, our graphic designer concentrated on portraying what the festival is about. The Edisto Blackwater Boogie is a music and outdoor festival, so it was important to create something appealing to the types of people who are interested in similar festivals, without alienating people who may not typically attend such festivals. 

We wanted the logo to be aesthetically pleasing while tying together the different elements of music and the great outdoors. At the same time, we had to make sure the logo we designed would translate well across several different mediums, including screen printing. 

Above all, we wanted to make a unique logo that would look great on merchandise like T-shirts, a logo people would be excited about and would be happy to wear. 

Consequently, our graphic designer chose specifically two colors which looked good on both dark and light backgrounds, specifically keeping budget for screen printing in mind. She also focused on elements of the festival itself; there’s a moon because the Edisto Blackwater Boogie takes place over a full moon weekend. There’s a guitar shape because there will be live musical performances. There’s a sprinkling of stars to represent the night sky. The curve of the body of the guitar in the logo is a subtle reference to the Edisto River itself. She also chose a font suited to a folk/bluesy tone. 

The Website

The festival planning committee was comprised of people with very different backgrounds and specialties, so we were the group with the most experience with web design and development. 

We took note of what features everyone on the committee wanted to be included on the website and designed it to meet all of the diverse needs. 

The main purpose of the website for the Edisto Blackwater Boogie was ticket sales, so we made sure to make the option to purchase tickets as visible and easy as possible.  

Beyond ticket sales, there were several different aspects festival committee members wanted to focus on. Consequently, we needed to figure out a way to organize an overwhelming amount of information in an approachable way. 

The schedule of events, artist/band lineup, different activities available at the festival, volunteer information and sign up, and sponsorship information (both opportunities and current sponsors) were all other important highlights. We designed a finished product capable of showcasing a wide breadth of information in an interesting way without distracting from the overarching goal of ticket sales. 

One of the ways we were able to display a large amount of information without making the user experience confusing was by having a clear, concise navigation menu. The homepage has a balance between the large display of the logo as well as relevant event info, including a countdown, the date, time, location, as well as buttons promoting sponsorship, ticket sales, and event activities—and it’s all right there when you first load the page.   

In addition to making sure the website worked well and made sense, we designed the website to be appealing and visually striking. Since the Edisto Blackwater Boogie is a celebration, we wanted their website to be very trendy and fun. 

Each page has sliding background images featuring images of the Edisto, of the campgrounds at Givhans Ferry State Park, of musicians—each image represents the experience someone can expect to have during the festival. We made sure the picture transitions were slow enough to make the background very subtle yet still engaging without being distracting. 

The website for the Edisto Blackwater Boogie leaned heavily on advanced CSS, which enabled features like the sliding background images, the color overlays, and the style of the footer with its outline of the trees (which reflect the actual treeline of the state park). Nothing about the website is generic—every detail reflects an aspect of the event.

Social Media Management and Content Writing

The Edisto Blackwater Boogie required a broad range of content for their marketing leading up to the event. Services we provided ranged from creating and managing pages on social media to writing content for their website, handouts, and magazine editorials. We also designed any handouts and posters they needed — basically, we provided them with all the same features as a full-service marketing agency.  

We also managed Facebook Ad and Google Ad campaigns based on a predetermined budget. Since the funds were from a nonprofit, we had more restrictions on how we could use them. We decided how to best allocate funds by analyzing data from initial campaigns and constantly evaluating our approach.   

The Edisto Blackwater Boogie was a large project with many moving parts, but in the end, we successfully coordinated with several other organizations to manage the marketing efforts for a very exciting event! We plan to be a large part of the Edisto Blackwater Boogie in the years to come. 

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