Boardmasters Surf Festival Event Identity Design
Event identity, merch design and mural artwork for Boardmasters 2025 surf competition, inspired by Cornwall’s coastline and surf culture.
Custom illustration
Mural Design
event identity design
The brief
boadmasters 2025 visual identity
Boardmasters is one of the UK’s biggest surf and music events, set in my favourite UK surf spot, the coastline of Newquay.
They asked me to create a visual identity for the surf competition that felt rooted in the place and culture around it. The surf, the skate, the music, the environment and the energy created when bringing these things together.
research phase
uncovering how to represent the event
Before designing anything, I needed to understand what actually makes Newquay and Fistral such a special place.
I already know the area well, it’s close to where I am and I’ve spent a lot of time there, with family living locally. But for this project I wanted to go deeper and understand it from different perspectives.
I spoke to people in the town and around the surf community to get a clearer sense of what they value most about it. A lot of what makes Boardmasters work comes from the energy local people bring to it, so that felt important to understand properly.
From this research I pulled together a set of key themes and developed them into 9 identifying icons, each one capturing a different part of what makes the event and place feel the way it does.
development
where the magic happened
During this phase of the project I was travelling through Spain and the coast of Portugal in a van with my partner Harry and our dog, Lola.
The poster developed alongside this time on the road, with ongoing experimentation around style, colour and layout until me and the Boardmasters design team were happy with how everything came together.
what i created
the visual system
The final identity ran across the full surf competition experience, from printed materials and merchandise through to on-site graphics and trophies awarded to athletes.
Everything was designed to feel consistent without feeling rigid, allowing the energy of the event to come through in different ways across different formats.
the event
murals at fistral beach
To have some hands on engagement with the event itself, i was invited to paint 2 large murals on-site. This was such a fun experience, painting the murals live around everything going on at the festival, letting the atmosphere and place guide the flow of the artwork.
One mural was inside the athletes lounge and the other at the entrance to Fistral Beach, both carrying thought-provoking messaging aimed at inspiring people passing through and bringing a bit more life into otherwise functional spaces.
similar project in mind?
Let’s make it happen!
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