Cascadia Poetry Festival Logo
Client: Cascadia Poetry Festival, an annual event of Cascadia Poetics LAB, Seattle, WA
Scope: Event logo evolution and annual identity design
Role: Logo and visual identity design
Platform: Print and digital applications
Timeline: January 2023 – Present (ongoing annual updates)
Context: The Cascadia Poetry Festival is an annual literary gathering in the Pacific Northwest focused on bioregional awareness, community building, and poetic exchange. While the festival operates under the umbrella of Cascadia Poetics LAB, it functions as a distinct, recurring event with its own programming, featured publications, and thematic emphasis each year.
Beginning in 2023, I was engaged to develop a logo approach that could support the festival’s ongoing evolution one that would remain recognizable over time while allowing each annual edition to express a distinct visual identity.
The Challenge: The central challenge was to design an event identity system, rather than a single static logo. The festival required an approach that could:
Support annual variation in theme, tone, and featured work
Maintain continuity and recognition across years
Function consistently across posters, schedules, programs, websites, and digital promotion
Remain visually aligned with Cascadia Poetics LAB without duplicating its core identity
Rather than producing a fixed mark, the solution needed to accommodate change as an essential feature of the festival itself.
The Solution: Beginning in 2023, the festival identity was reconceived as an annual logo system rather than a single permanent mark.
Each year, a new festival logo is designed to express that edition’s visual and conceptual focus, while maintaining recognizable ties to the broader Cascadia visual language. This approach allows the festival to feel current and responsive, while preserving long-term recognition.
Rather than prioritizing rigid consistency, the system emphasizes continuity through structure, typography, and tone, allowing individual logos to shift as the event itself evolves.
Key design decisions included
Annual Logo System
Designing a new logo for each festival edition, enabling visual themes to change year to year while maintaining recognition.
Relationship to the Parent Identity
Ensuring each logo remains visually aligned with Cascadia Poetics LAB without duplicating its core mark.
Flexible, Event-First Use
Creating logos that adapt easily across posters, schedules, digital banners, and promotional materials.
The Result: The Cascadia Poetry Festival now has a flexible and sustainable identity approach that supports creative renewal each year without sacrificing coherence. The evolving logo system allows each festival edition to stand on its own, while still feeling part of a larger, place-based cultural ecosystem.
What This Project Demonstrates:
Designing logos for recurring cultural events
Managing identity evolution over time, not just one-off marks
Balancing consistency with creative flexibility
Supporting long-term cultural programs through adaptable visual systems
Cascadia Poetry Festival 10 Web Banner