For the third installment of River Mouth, we expanded the festival into a six-day immersive experience across multiple venues in Mississauga (Malton Youth Hub, The Rec Room, The Crooked Cue). To tie these disparate events together, I developed a "Conspiracy Theory" narrative theme titled "Cypher Circles."
The concept was a visual pun: blending the alien imagery of "Crop Circles" with the hip-hop tradition of the "Rap Cypher." The goal was to make the festival feel like an underground, classified event that the audience had "discovered. I moved away from the polished gold of Year 2 and embraced a gritty, lo-fi "investigative" aesthetic.
The Master Visual: The main campaign image was designed as a chaotic "Evidence Board" (Crazy Wall), featuring red string connections, pinned polaroids, and redacted documents, symbolizing the connecting of dots between the youth workshops and the main stage.
Contextual Polaroids: For the artist announcements (Junia-T, Rich Kidd, Scott Jackson, etc.), I created a "found footage" system. Instead of placing the photos on a plain background, each Polaroid was digitally "placed" on a surface that reflected the vibe of the sub-event:
