Brighton Bear Weekend 2024 T-shirt logo design

More than your average Brighton weekend

Brighton Bear Weekend – BBW – is a group of volunteers who stage several events targeting bears and their friends throughout the year, culminating in the flagship event. The events also raise funds for the Brighton Rainbow Fund and Sussex Beacon.

The T-shirt design plays a major role in creating a distinct visual identity for each year’s event. This year, the BBW committee approached us for a fresh design.

The design brief

The T-shirt must incorporate the BBW logo, preferably as a visible/identifiable part of the core imagery (e.g. on a guy’s baseball cap), and/or as a separate image.
Text – must include brightonbearweekend.com and the year (2024 or ’24)
If the colour of the t-shirt is part of the design, please specify it.
The image should not be over-complicated as it will need to scale for display on the web or as a thumbnail.
Any text should use the Montserrat font family.
Brighton Bear Weekend is an adult event aimed at bears, so nothing too sweet or cute (e.g. a teddy bear & love heart), but equally nothing so raunchy that it couldn’t be displayed in a local supermarket or library. We are about fun.
We are sensitive to our brothers who do not drink alcohol, so this mustn’t feature heavily. Food is OK!
We can use recognisable Brighton or seaside iconography if it is not trademark-protected. (e.g., Pavilion/pier/deckchair are fine). We can clearly use bear iconography: flag/pawprint etc.t

The target audience

Gay men define themselves as part of the bear community, including bears, cubs, otters, daddies, and chubs, along with their friends and admirers. Core age group 25 – 60.
They like to socialise at events with other men, meet old and make new friends, or more!
The audience comes from across the UK, with a handful of international visitors. Some, but not all, will have experience of past Brighton Bear events. Around a third are local to Brighton & Hove.

The tone

Friendly, furry fun by the sea. Masculine, social, slightly tongue-in-cheek, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Starting from the past

We started the creative process by researching the T-shirt designs that had been done in previous years. The research led us to consider how the design would feature on the end product and discuss whether colour gradients, flat colours or a mix would work best on a T-shirt.

Most importantly, it allowed us to understand ways to innovate in terms of concept and design for 2024.

Concepts

We developed several rough concepts with variations for the BBW committee to review and select a design to move forward into the finished artwork.

A band of bears

Concept A was a group of three varied bear characters. Two variations were a Brighton Pavilion frame and a BBW logo silhouette frame.

Beary chest

Concept B was an implied furry bear pattern chest, using the Bear Brotherhood claw logo.

The King of Brighton

Concept C featured a bear character crowned by the Brighton Pavilion.

The bear with the Pavillion tattoo

Concept D was a full-bodied bear character featuring a Brighton Pavilion tattoo.

A Brightonian friendship

Concept E featured a friendship between a bear and a seagull.

Final BBW 2024 T-shirt design

A Brightonian Friendship was chosen to move forward into final print artwork. Having come up with the original concept, Phaedon took the lead in developing the design to its completion. However, the line work and bear characters created by Jeff in the Band of Bears concept informed the construction of the bear character’s face and the overall graphic style of the design. The collaboration continued until the print-ready assets were delivered to the printer.