THE GATHERING
The Gathering
Services
Brand Strategy & Design
Brand Design Systems
Digital & Content Design
Print and Collateral Design
Project Overview
The Gathering is an annual Celtic festival held in Ipswich, Queensland — brought to life by the Ipswich City Pipe Band as a way to open up the region's Celtic heritage to a wider community audience. The event needed an identity that could carry that spirit from launch day and grow with it year after year.
The Challenge
Celtic events carry a lot of visual baggage — think tartan, dark greens, and imagery that leans heavily on tradition. The brief here pushed in a different direction. The Gathering needed to feel bright, modern and welcoming, capturing a genuine sense of community and celebration rather than leaning on the clichés of the genre. It also needed to be built for longevity — flexible enough to evolve as the event grew without requiring a redesign every season.
The Solution + Results
I developed the full brand identity for The Gathering from the ground up, exploring several directions early in the process before landing on a system that balanced cultural reference with contemporary energy. From there I extended the identity across all original collateral for the launch — print, wayfinding and digital assets — giving the event a cohesive visual presence across every touchpoint from the moment it opened its gates. The brand has continued to serve the event since launch, a mark of how well the system was built to last.
