August 7th marks the date of the first annual Farnam Festival. The festival was created as an annual community event at 40th and Farnam (just outside Oxide’s front door). This year will offer a great line-up of bands as well as food, beer gardens, a silent art auction, vendors, and raffles. Admission to the event is $10, and the money raised will be used to convert Farnam Street traffic to two-way from 36th to 42nd streets. The goal is to raise $50,000 by the end of the summer to complete the project. Converting the street to two-way will allow better local access to the businesses along Farnam and will promote the area more as a neighborhood, instead of an exit route from downtown.

Farnam Festival 2010 poster

The mastermind behind the festival is Oxide’s neighbor and local photographer Brad Iwen, owner of Iwen Exposures Photography. After recently moving his photography business to Omaha, Brad saw potential in the area and decided that he had to move his business here. With the unique variety of businesses already located in the area, it really has the potential to be the next Benson or Dundee. The conversion of Farnam Street to two-way at Midtown Crossing (just down the road from us) would make expansion into our area a natural progression.

Poster detail

When Brad decided that a festival would be a great way to raise money and get people to the neighborhood, he called on the businesses in the area: Sullivan’s Bar, the recently-added Black Squirrel Tattoo shop, ICON Studio for Hair, and Oxide to help in the endeavor. Since our talents are not in the realm of crowd management, it was Oxide’s job to create the visuals for the event. Our primary goal was to promote two-way Farnam, so we started off with the bold visual of a two-way traffic sign. We also wanted to showcase all that the festival had to offer, but didn’t want to turn the poster into a bulleted list. Our solution was to cram as many fun and exciting graphic elements as possible into the arrows — to underscore how much fun and exiting stuff will be crammed into the eight-hour festival.

The poster is hand-drawn, using a mix of pre-and post-Illustrator and Photoshop assembly — then screen-printed by Ink Tank on a traffic-yellow paper stock.

With acts like Thunder Power, Sarah Benck, and the Southpaw Bluegrass Band, there’s something for everyone. So make sure to mark your calendars for Saturday, August 7th, 2010 for a festival that will be a catalyst for a better neighborhood.