"Why?" - North & South OKC District Camp 2015
I co-dean a camp for the United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City. The theme this year was "Why?". Campers were challenged to critically think about why we practice certain things as Christians. The point wasn't to have a crash course in apologetics. Rather, it was really to help youth claim faith for themselves as opposed to something handed down to them. Even as an adult that's important.
So, I was tasked with coming up with the imaging for the week. Here were some initial sketches:
I played around with what could be done with the question mark. The question mark is a really interesting character and I've seen it used in so many different ways. Eventually, I wondered what would it look like to drop the "y" and substitute it with a question mark. Here were some initial designs:
Between the vector circles and serif fonts, these felt too stiff. So I lightened it up with the Cinnamon Cake font and more loose lines. The tagline "questions welcomed" remained in a standard font.
One of the things I added later was the loose and almost randomized circles around the text. I got this idea from just glancing back at the sketch pages. When I decided which directions it would be best to go in, I circled them in red. So, I started out with one circle and to me it still felt like something was missing. Then I began viewing the theme wider.
When I thought about how I circled the images on the paper, I thought about how I used to do the same thing in college when I couldn't figure something out. I would circle that item over and over again until I remembered or figured it out. So, I thought it might be cool to add a few more circles around the text.
Some months ago, I created a multi-purpose, angular image. It was just something I was playing around with at the time. It made a great background for this project because of how it resembles pages spread about a table (like when trying to figure something out). So along with circling the text and this background image, I think it really pulls the theme of questions and figuring things out all together.
Here were some applications:
This camp has now transitioned to the name "Camp Spark" — another branding project I had the opportunity to work on (see the branding page for the imaging). A post will be coming on that shortly, so stay tuned!