Moonlight, a Slavic Culture and Music Festival
Background
This was a 10-week project for the course HCDE 308, Visual Communication in Human Centered Design and Engineering; we were tasked with creating a visual system for a festival on the University of Washington campus. My chosen festival is ‘Moonlight Festival’, a Slavic culture and music festival. My family is Russian and I also speak fluent Russian, so I wanted some of my own heritage to shine through in this project.
Core value proposition: For students who are looking for a sense of community through their Slavic heritage, Moonlight Festival offers an immersive, modern celebration of culture, blending traditional and contemporary music, art, and cuisine under an exhilarating nighttime atmosphere. The festival fosters community, deepens cultural connections, and introduces a fresh, dynamic take on Slavic traditions.
Unique selling point: Unlike other Slavic festivals, this event takes place at night and transforms the experience into a visually stunning experience with immersive light displays, and illuminated festival grounds. This fosters an enchanting and memorable ambience.
Role: Graphic & UX/UI Designer
Duration: Jan 2025 - Mar 2025
Tools Utilized: Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Project Type: Human-Centered Design
Initial Research
I selected three key Slavic festivals as references for this project:
I chose The Taste of Polonia Festival of Music and Food, one of the largest Slavic festivals in the U.S., showcases Polish and Slavic culture through food, music, and entertainment over four days.
I chose The Washington Ukrainian Festival, a local annual event in September, because it provides a regional comparison to the larger Taste of Polonia.
Lastly, I chose the Sugar Creek Slavic Festival in Missouri because it has been a long-standing cultural event since 1984, attracting thousands of visitors and serving as a valuable case study for understanding audience engagement and festival longevity.
Taste of Polonia is one of the largest Polish festivals in the U.S., attracting 40,000–60,000 attendees with authentic food, music, and entertainment since 1980. Welcoming all cultures it features a packed lineup of musical artists, 35+ vendors, and theatre showings.
The Sugar Creek Slavic Festival is a 2-day outdoor event in Sugar Creek, Missouri, drawing thousands of attendees each year with live music, dancing, authentic food, folk art, and cultural experiences. It embraces a broad Slavic identity, creating an inclusive and welcoming atmosphere for all branches of Slavic descent. Its small-town setting fosters a strong sense of community.
The Washington Ukrainian Festival is a 3-day Slavic event drawing over 12,000 attendees with a diverse range of activities and Ukrainian exhibits. It offers interactive booths, homemade meals, handcrafted goods, and fundraising for charity. Since 2002, it has built a strong community tradition celebrating Ukrainian culture.
PERSONAS
WORDMARK
ITERATIONS
FINAL WORDMARK
‘Moonlight’ symbolizes the enchanting atmosphere of Slavic culture, illuminated through music, interactive workshops and art under the evening sky. It emphasizes the festival's unique late-afternoon-to-night timing, offering a magical, immersive experience enhanced by visually stunning lights.
I wanted to convey a feeling of enchantment, tradition, and mystery, because they represent the captivating ambience of Slavic folklore and cultural diversity celebrated in the festival.To accomplish this, I chose ‘Russian Land’, which is a sans-serif font.
The font uses terminals and alludes to the Cyrillic alphabet, which creates a sense of heritage. Heritage is important because it connects the festival to its roots. By using bold weight, and upright posture, I further emphasize the feeling of enchantment, getting people excited for the event. Note: I added serifs to the ‘M’ and ‘T’ to better resemble Cyrillic.
LOGOMARK
ITERATIONS
FINAL WORDMARK
FINAL LOGOMARK
I wanted to convey a feeling of mystery, folklore, and wonder through my logomark.
To accomplish this, I chose a bear to represent my festival.
The symbol reflects feelings of wonder, mystery and folklore by alluding to a very prominent and symbolic figure in Slavic culture. I wanted the bear’s silhouette to appear as if it were formed by the reflection of the moon, which it is gazing up at. This effect is difficult to imagine in its current black-on-white display, but my ultimate goal is to present the design in a white-on-black format. It uses varying styles of line, and shape to form the outline of the bear which is similar to my wordmark's thick weight, finials, and the sharp edges of the serifs on the ‘M’ and the ‘T’.
MOODBOARD
I want my festival to take place at night, so for my mood board I was looking for inspiration from other night themed artwork. I also wanted a black and red color palette for my festival which is why a majority of the images contain black and red. I think black is a good representation of night time and red is a very symbolic Slavic color. I want the feel of my festival to be very atmospheric, ambient, and mysterious. The red moon and the night sky are good representations of how I want my colors to work in my design. The two red poster designs I included are the type of contrast I would like to develop. Lastly, the national geographic poster inspired my symbol design which is why I included it.
COLORS
Iterations
Final Color Palette
I wanted to convey a feeling of mystery, heritage, and wonder through my color palette.
To accomplish this, I chose a ‘Slavic Moonlit Evening’ color palette, which features the colors, Night Sky, Blood Moon, Starlight, and Zoroya Crimson. My scheme reflects feelings of mystery heritage and wonder by utilizing bright red which is a prominent color in all Slavic flags. This ensures that all cultures are represented. I also used white and black for high contrast, and these will hopefully help me create an ‘eerie but beautiful’ feeling when I transition into finalizing my poster and app design. I added the crimson color for accents if necessary when adding details.
Typography
Tac One’ is not my chosen wordmark font, but I needed to use it for my headings because my original font was too ornate and a very complex display font that would be too busy. I chose the font ‘Tac One’ for my headers, and the font ‘Josefin Sans’ for my body text. I paired these two fonts for a few key reasons. First of all, they both follow a geometric structure, and are sans serif fonts. I wanted two fonts that were angular and geometric, but slightly different to indicate headings and body text. The x height of ‘Josefin Sans’ is relatively tall, and ‘Tac One’ follow a similar proportion. They also have single story a’s and a width that is similar when all letters are capitalized. The axis of both fonts is also fully vertical, making them more compatible.
POSTER DESIGN
ITERATIONS
Final Poster
I chose Tac One as my supplementary header font for headline events, while Josefin Sans was used for additional event details and descriptions.
To establish hierarchy, I made the wordmark the largest element on the page, serving as the focal point. Header 1 was bold and fully capitalized to act as a strong secondary focal point. For Header 2, I maintained bold styling but avoided capitalization, keeping it visually important yet distinct. Event times and locations were also bolded using Tac One to differentiate them from the body text. To further define hierarchy, I used capitalized Josefin Sans for the body text—its thinner weight contrasting with Tac One for clarity and balance.
Map DESIGN
I wanted to create a map that was clear, informative, and mysterious. I kept my map pretty simple by blocking in basic shapes with my color palette and labeling my map afterwards.
I tried not to include unnecessary details to refrain from overwhelming my users. I also had a very robust labeling system. Every label had a distinct purpose and I made sure that each one was clearly distinguishable from the others.
To tie in my map with my festival theme, I added the moon element above my word mark which I want to include in all of my festival content. I also included my word mark and my symbol in white.
SIGNAGE
ITERATIONS
FINAL
I wanted to convey feelings of awe mystery and wonder with my poster. I added the moon element into my poster since I would like to include that element throughout all of my festival components for consistency. It alludes to nighttime and an eerie ambience.
I added my symbol and wordmark to aid with branding cohesiveness. I kept the colors limited to black, white, and red for contrast and simplicity. I chose a primary form of signage because I wanted to include large decorative elements in my sign and thought that primary signage would have limited words, and is generally fairly intuitive, which led me to selecting this option.
MOBILE APP - USER FLOW |Merchandise purchasing
LOW FIDELITY
USER TESTING
INSIGHTS
I conducted 4 user tests for my low-fidelity prototype. There were a few key takeaways that I would implement into my high-fidelity iterations of which include:
Facing the close button in the navigation bar in the other direction for usability.
My current version included basic interactions and frames acting as placeholders for functionality. Users mentioned that they would like to see something fully responsive to their interactions.
In my next iteration I would implement full functionality for the merchandise user flow.
Users also mentioned that they would rather see the checkout summary in their cart rather than right after adding to cart, seen in the 5th screen.
In the next iteration I would add a checkout summary after the user fills out their personal information, and would remove the initial ‘Added to Cart’ summary.
UI STYLE TILE
I chose to design five icons for my mobile app [event schedule, merch, home, tickets, and map]
I wanted the icons to relate to my logomark. To accomplish this I used shape and line, which is similar to my wordmark's serifs on the ‘M’ and the ‘T’, as well as the curvature of the ‘O’s.
The home button is a reference to the story ‘Baba Yaga’ to help with relating the icons back to Slavic culture. The rest of the icons contain elements of Slavic artwork for cohesiveness and relation to heritage.
In my designs the primary button is used to add an item to cart. The secondary button is used to view events for mt festival. The checkout form is utilized in the checkout screens for my festival when completing a purchase.
High Fidelity Wireframes
High Fidelity PROTOTYPE
After the completion of my high-fidelity wireframes, I developed a fully functional prototype which allows the user to add items to their card and to checkout. I recorded a video of the walkthrough of all of my frames and I have included a link to that demo. I have also included a link to my Figma so that you can check out my design!
Reflection
This project is a great representation of everything that I have learned throughout my time at the University of Washington. I was able to practice modifying typography, designing graphics such as my symbol (the bear) and all of my icons for my UI, assessing and implementing information hierarchy, layout, and color. I also created mood boards, wireframes, high-fidelity prototypes, and incorporated user testing to evaluate the usability of my designs. Lastly, I created a fully functional prototype with the use of collections and variables such as integers, strings, and boolean values.
At the end of the quarter, I was given the opportunity to showcase my design in my HCDE 308 class and it was awesome being able to see everyone else’s work! This has been my favorite project thus far and I can’t wait to keep working on it to improve the user experience in my mobile app! I have included a link to the full case study below which details the full extent of the project.
