Creating a vaporwave-infused visual identity for the fully professionalized third edition of Brno Pride Week, featuring 46 events and introducing this year’s signature "Rainbow Flower Halo" design element.

Professionalizing the Dream

The year 2023 marked the moment Brno Pride Week stepped fully into its professional potential. Crucially, we secured financial support from the South Moravian Region, which fundamentally changed the scope of what we could achieve.

We stopped being a small collective and became a massive engine. Our team ballooned to 23 dedicated individuals, structured effectively to manage the growth. We had coordinators for everything: Volunteer Coordinators, Festival Center and Venue Coordinators, a fully operational Photo and Video Team, a dedicated Press Spokesperson, and specialized roles like the Pride Park Manager and Festival Arranger. We truly had a person for every single detail. This effective coordination allowed us to realize a core ambition: inviting top queer personalities from both the Czech and Slovak scenes to participate.

The result was an extensive and impactful festival featuring 46 distinct events—a clear signal that we were now a major cultural force.

Visual Language: Rainbow Gang Meets Vaporwave Nostalgia

For this year, I decided the visuals needed to reflect our growth while keeping our playful, community-focused spirit. I wanted to move away from complex, hyper-modern design and dive deep into nostalgia.

The core aesthetic blended minimalist '90s digital nostalgia with moderate vaporwave, creating a clean yet playful retro-tech look. This was grounded in a deliberate high-contrast scheme:

• Foundation: The background was stark black, overlaid with a faint white, squared grid—like the paper in a school notebook—to give a subtle, structured texture and retro-tech feel.
• Mascots: The beloved crocodile gained four companions. They were simple, black-lined, monochromatic figures—the original green crocodile joined by friends in solid yellow, red, pink, and light blue. This simplicity ensured strong recognition and maximum visibility on posters.
• The Halo Element (The Visual Anchor): The biggest visual win was the profile picture frame requested by the team. Instead of typical, cliché ribbons, I took inspiration from one graphic designer's wavelike bouquet and created a nine-petaled, wavy flower (nodding to the newer 9-stripe pride flag variants). This design formed a circular cutout for faces, surrounded by our vibrant rainbow gradient. This signature supplementary element—the "Rainbow Flower Halo"—served as the primary visual anchor across all platforms:
  • It seamlessly integrated faces (for both team members and invited guests) into the festival brand, creating a stylized "queer saint-like halo" for our community leaders, as seen prominently on graphics for top-billed speakers and performers.
  • It was strategically placed as a colorful, flowing counterpoint to the rigid black-and-white grid background, uniting the main poster, the "Top 5 Events" flyers, and all social media graphics.

We dramatically improved the user experience for accessing the festival program.

• The Printed Piece: For the first time, we produced a printed program brochure. It was designed as a simple fold-out, featuring a meticulous table of all 46 events.
• The Map: The reverse side featured a highly practical, custom-designed map of all festival venues, along with a QR code link to a custom Google Map, ensuring participants could navigate the massive program with ease. The mobile-friendly offline PDF program was also created.

The Festival Program: Spanning Community, Culture, and Activism

The diversity of the 46 events truly underscored our goal to create an inclusive and comprehensive safe space. The week kicked off with a huge Gala Opening (featuring drag queen moderation, stand-up, music, and dance) and an Opening Party with a drag singer concert and DJs. Throughout the week, we hosted vital community and social events like Speed Dating, Speed Friending, a BBQ, a Queer Pub Quiz, and a Warm Walk. The program also included numerous cultural and educational activities, such as Film Screenings, Panel Discussions, Workshops, Theatre Performances, Podcasts, and Dramatized Readings. Unique additions to the program included a Worship Service and a high-energy Barbie Rave, alongside the particularly heartwarming and impactful event, the Queer Book Reading by a Drag Queen for children. The week traditionally closed not with a parade, but with the beloved and relaxed Queer Park/Picnic.

Legacy: Massive Impact