Seaside Summers Timaru + Seaside Festival

Seaside Summers Timaru + Seaside Festival

The Seaside Summers concept was a social media campaign created to promote and celebrate summer holidays in Timaru. Run by Venture Timaru Tourism, the campaign incorporated not only social media promotion but also physical and visual elements such as custom designed flags. These flags were installed above Caroline Bay, situated along a popular thoroughfare on The Bay Hill in central Timaru.

Seaside Summers Design

The direction for the design was defined by Venture Timaru. VT wanted to incorporate a historical ‘Timaru by the Sea’ graphic but with a new, modern style in a blending of old and new. The objective for the image was to portray the fabulous evenings and summer nights by the sea.

The Timaru By the Sea graphic was a vintage NZ Railway studios poster of an iconic lady from 1937. At the time it was designed to advertise rail travel to Timaru, which was then known as the ‘Riviera of the South’.

Whilst the iconic lady formed the inspiration and basis of the graphic, the final design ended up being uniquely different: it was created in multiple colours and with a more modern reference base.

Seaside Festival

Tied in with the Seaside Summers campaign was the Seaside Festival. This identity was developed for Venture Timaru as a new event for the region. It featured sand sculptures, kite flying, and all manner of family activities – all, of course, to be based around Caroline Bay.

The purpose of the Festival was to celebrate all things good about seaside summers with a series of festive events.

This design was created intentionally to complement the Seaside Summers graphic design. They would reference each other in their design styles, while also maintaining their own identities.

For consistency and to link the two concepts, the same typeface was used across both branding designs. In addition, complementary ocean-themed colours and the phrase “seaside summers” were used to establish visual continuity.