LOGO, BRANDING

Formed in the summer of 2018 by a few members of the “MO-KAN TIKI” Facebook group, Malihini Tiki Fest was planned to be a joyous celebration of culture with many vendors and bars coming from all over the country, from Boston to L.A. and every stop in-between.

We did a deep-sea dive exploration to find the right look for this festival, hoping to tap into the history of Kansas City tiki bars of the past, we found numerous artifacts to draw inspiration from including matchbooks, menus, old newspaper articles and even two 9-foot tall tikis that used to be housed in one of the tiki bars of a long-forgotten era.

Malihini is the Hawaiian word for “newcomer” so we wanted to create a design that captured the spirit of having everyone be welcome to the event year after year. We sketched out multiple custom type options to incorporate history and welcoming, positive energy we wanted to emit to attendees.

Wooden texture of some sort was a must, as well as incorporating some type of foliage to really bring the escapism that tiki culture is about. After we had a few options of type to refine, we started using different layers of vellum to stack the type and placement of palm trees, orchids and vines around the type while still letting it speak for itself.

For the tiki head on top of the logo, we wanted to use the tiki’s that were originally in one of Kansas City’s tiki bars of the past for reference. We tapped into our fine art knowledge and thought the best solution would be a cubist approach to incorporating all of the shapes on the original tiki.

As always, we did the final steps in Adobe Illustrator to vector every single grain of wood and leafs.