I had the pleasure to reimagine the 2026 Block Party Grant visual identity. 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation, the building of our democracy. Boston is the birthplace of the Revolution. Due to this, the City has been gearing up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation in style. Part of this was a swanky new visual identity and campaign called Boston 250. While 2026 is the 250th anniversary of the United States, it is also the year that the World Cup is coming to Boston. With such a momentous summer ahead of us, the Office of Civic Organizing was teaming up other departments to provide a kit of street games, space activations, and sporting goods to help Block Party recipients celebrate both our nation’s founding and the World Cup.
Originally, we were just going to reutilize a template and visual identity that we had created years prior. However, as the project evolved and we began creating branded items that were being put inside the kits, we realized that the whole initiative needed a face lift to match. Since this was a partnership with Boston 250, I decided to lean a bit into their branding: bold colors, duotone treatments, layers, texture.
I first started with the image, I wanted to use an image from a previously granted block party to help tell the story of the initiative. Then, I removed the background and put a duotone treatment of this light cool blue to contrast the deep blue background. Then, to reintroduce color and provide some dimension, I layered parts of the individuals clothing without the duotone effect applied. This gave pops of color that were necessary.
With the base of the graphic created, I began to work on the text. We’ve always used the tagline of “This summer host a Block Party.” However, this year to tie in a more sporty vibe, I brought the language of “throw a Block Party.” Its a subtle nod but still on theme. I locked this text up in a series of thick marker strokes to bring texture into the design. I needed to find a place to highlight the Block Party Kits because they were the whole reason we were revamping the visual identity. So, I placed the text below the large marker strokes in italic Lora and placed a thin marker stroke below it to help provide emphasis.
When all of this was done, I felt the graphic was still missing something. So, I added some design elements such as the star, the flower, and the almost slime like globs at the top. I used these as an opportunity to bring more contrast to the design as well and brought in complementary colors to the blue. This helped to bring color from the bottom of the graphic all the way through to create visual balance. With our logos, due to the mixture of colors used at the bottom of the graphic, we were losing the battle in color contrast. So, to help the logos pop more, I brought in another thick marker stroke. This additional marker stroke helped to bring the marker strokes down from the top third, to the middle third, and now all the way to the lower third. This, again, helped to bring visual balance.
To help further the sport portion of the theme, I layered a bunch of a soccer net texture into the background. This helped the graphic feel less flat while also subtly nodding to the World Cup element of the Block Party Kits.
Finally, when the Creative Team that oversees all of our branding and I were running through the final version, we felt our font Montserrat didn’t bring the party vibe enough. So, I scoured through typefaces trying to find the right one. I ended up landing on this thick display font that had textured edges. It almost looked as if the font was dancing. When I ran the final design by the Creative Team, we had all agreed this was the final piece of our puzzle.
Below you can find a plain version of the graphic to help visualize all the texture that this design offers!
