Arlington County Fair
The old logo
Arlington County Fair was founded in 1976 and is a free event that the brings community together through food and drinks, rides, games, concerts, vendor booths, shopping, and local traditions. They are a non-profit volunteer-driven organization.
The Fair Board engaged us to redesign their old logo and create a logo usage guide. At the start of the project, the board was envisioning a light modification of their old logo and retaining the flag element in the new design. However, they were also open to a full reimagination of the logo sans flag.
The main goal was to create an evergreen logo to serve as the visual foundation and recognition of the Fair. The new logo would be used on all marketing materials, both digital and print, and would continue to be the core mark for the fair for years to come.
After a quick kick-off call, and another more in-depth discussion on Zoom, we developed 5 different designs, each with their own distinct style. The main marketing team on the board voted on the top 3 choices to then present to the entire board. From their vote, they selected the top 2 choices to move forward with.
We then created multiple refined iterations of the top 2 selections. After deliberations and voting, the board decided this logo was their favorite!
The design features friendly bright colors, a decorative all-caps curved lettering referencing metal marquee light signs in a vintage style, combined with a retro drop shadow for depth, and a punchy ribbon reminiscent of the previous flag element, with a modern sans serif font that’s whimsy and fun (plus two cute yellow stars!). Similar to the lively fair full of activities, there is a lot of action happening in this dynamic logo—designed to energize and entertain the participants!
In addition to the full-color logo, we created an icon that works well in small sizes, a reversed version (for dark backgrounds), a modified version (sans dots and the set date) for very small use cases, and a fully cut-out one color logo (black and white) for when one color or no color is available. Our logo usage guide fully explains how to and how not to use the logo, and provides the non-profit with specific brand color codes and fonts used. And of course, we gave them our quick guide to logo file formats PDF so they’ll know what file they need, where to use it, who uses it, and why it’s right for the job.
Now the fair has a professional, effective, eye-catching logo to help establish them as a reputable community event that’s educational and entertaining for everyone; A fair for all committed to showcasing the best of Arlington!
