15th Annual Rhythms Music Festival

CAMPAIGN branding AND ART DIRECTION: Print, social, and motion

Project OverviewI led brand design for the 15th Rhythms Music Festival, presented by Associated Students. The festival's main show was headlined by Bay Area's own Mike Sherm and P-Lo.

The campaign reached over 200,000 impressions across TikTok and Instagram within the first week, and the main show sold out its 1,000+ capacity venue in under 10 minutes, the fastest sellout in the festival's 15-year history.

My department, alongside Productions and The Depot planned the 2026 edition of the festival.

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Artist Selection and Audience ResearchThat sellout didn't happen by accident. The previous year's festival had significantly underperformed, because the headliner didn't align with student tastes. Internally, a few colleagues and I believed a Bay Area hip-hop headliner would resonate far more with our Gen Z and Millennial-leaning student population, many of whom were from the Bay Area and Southern California.

We advocated for Mike Sherm, floating Too Short and SOB x RBE as alternatives. To validate the idea, we ran a three-week ranked-choice survey across our social and print channels, collecting 570 responses. All three artists ranked in the top three, with Mike Sherm in first, confirming our read on the audience. With that data in hand, our production team reached out to lock in Mike Sherm as our headliner and P-Lo as our opener.

Moodboard

Final Color Palette

Final Typography Kit

Final Wordmark

Visual Language: Homegrown
Authenticity was the core of this project. Since SFSU is a commuter school woven into the fabric of an urban landscape, I cemented the brand as an extension of the city and greater Bay Area rather than an isolated campus event. That meant pulling directly from the region’s own visual language: airbrush art, vibrant graffiti, transit ads, and weathered wheatpaste posters. The result was a brand that felt grassroots, organic, and unmistakably of the Bay, a worldbuilding approach that scaled into a cohesive system across merchandise, event flyers, tickets, lanyards, signage, and social posts.

Commemorative ticket and staff badge

VIP badge

Photo Credit: Mari Ramos

Photo Credit: Mari Ramos

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