Unlocking worlds of wonder for Perth's most ambitious cultural festival.
Portals to the extraordinary.
Joondalup Festival is Perth’s award-winning cultural arts festival — named Australia’s best at the 2023 Australian Event Awards. Following on from our 2025 project, our ambition for 2026 was to go significantly further.
The brief: retain the two iconic half-circle logo shapes, elevate everything else. Our concept — “Unlock Worlds of Wonder” — transforms those hemispheres into prismatic 3D portals, each one a gateway to the festival’s extraordinary program.
The creative pipeline moved from AI-assisted visual exploration through to Blender modelling, then into the browser as a fully immersive WebGL experience built with React Three Fiber. The result is a website where 3D portals float across an oceanic landscape that shifts in real-time with Joondalup’s actual time of day — butterflies by morning, fireflies by night.
From there, we rolled the system out across the full campaign: social media, digital advertising, environmental signage, print collateral, and wristbands — a complete dynamic brand system built to position Joondalup alongside Perth’s most ambitious cultural events.
Brand needed to match a bolder ambition
The festival had outgrown its visual identity. While the existing brand served its purpose, the 2026 program — featuring everything from Indigenous storytelling (KAYA) to a David Bowie photography exhibition — demanded a creative system that could carry genuine cultural weight across dozens of touchpoints.
A prismatic identity built from the logo itself
We reimagined the half-circle logo elements as translucent, light-catching 3D portals. Each hemisphere becomes a visual gateway — shifting colour and form depending on its context, while maintaining instant brand recognition. The system flexes naturally from intimate gallery events to large-scale waterborne spectacles.
A static website for an anything-but-static festival
The previous site delivered information clearly but did nothing to evoke the sense of wonder and discovery that defines the festival experience. For a program positioned around "Dreams. Stardust. Curiosity. Unreal." — the digital front door needed to feel like stepping through a portal.
An immersive 3D environment that breathes with the real world
We built a WebGL experience using React Three Fiber where 3D hemispheres float across an oceanic landscape. The environment is timecoded to Joondalup's actual time of day — morning, afternoon, and night each have distinct light temperatures, colour palettes, and ambient elements. It's a website that feels alive.
Eclectic program, limited artist assets
The festival's 10+ events ranged wildly in genre and audience — from puppet theatre to immersive drag cinema — and many arrived with little or no usable promotional imagery.
Introduced interaction
Using AI-generated visuals as a starting point, we developed a production workflow that created high-quality, on-brand promotional material for every event — regardless of what assets were provided. Each event received its own colour gradient, bespoke typography treatment, and branded imagery within the design system, ensuring the full program felt cohesive while each event maintained its own distinct personality.
Needed to work everywhere, not just on screens
The campaign had to translate from Instagram Stories to 15-metre marina hoardings to wristbands — without losing impact or recognition at any scale.
A design system built for every medium
We developed a comprehensive brand toolbox covering digital-first applications (social media, display advertising, email) alongside print and environmental formats (pole banners, hoardings, wristbands, on-site signage). The gradient system, typography hierarchy, and portal motif all scale cleanly from a 320px mobile screen to a billboard.
