A festival-wide brand system and interactive attendee activation for Subaru Winterfest
—designed, manufactured, and delivered across five mountain resorts.
[Services]
+ PRODUCT DESIGN
+ CREATIVE DIRECTION
+ MANUFACTURING
+ EXPERIENTIAL MERCHANDISING
[The Overview]
The ask was giveaways. Three tiers of product for a traveling winter festival running across five mountain resorts.
What Winterfest got was an identity—a brand system spanning posters, stages, signage, and social; roughly fifteen custom products built to match; and an activation that gave attendees a reason to walk the festival and gave every sponsor a guaranteed moment of contact.
Five mountains, coast to coast. Thousands of people walking between sponsor booths to get a postcard signed.
The merch didn't just show up at Winterfest. It moved people through it.
[The Challenge]
Winterfest runs late January through early May across Killington, Eldora, Copper Mountain, Snowbird, and Mt. Bachelor. The resorts need traffic. Subaru, as keystone sponsor, needs affinity. A roster of partner brands needs a reason to keep buying in.
After year one, the gaps were obvious:
Sponsors operated in silos, with no shared identity tying them to the festival
Attendees who weren't skiing had long stretches with nothing to do between sets
One hero poster was the only branded asset—so when a stage backdrop was needed, the artwork got cut apart to make one
None of that was in the brief. But a festival isn't a lineup. It's a reason to walk around. Solve movement, and all three problems close at once.
[The Approach]
The Brand System
A location-specific poster series in a flat, bold, broadly readable style—built to sit underneath the experience rather than shout over it. At the center, a Yeti loose in the mountains, giving the festival a persona instead of a layout.
From there, roughly ten digital assets: posters, social graphics, web banners, stage backdrops, wayfinding. Purpose-built, so nothing would need to be cut apart again.
The system changed the sponsor conversation too. Partners could co-brand into festival products—like the Harman Kardon blanket—instead of printing a logo on a black ski strap.
The Postcard Passport
An illustrated festival map with a signature line for every sponsor. Collect them all, unlock a custom deck of cards.
It began as a stamped passport booklet. Signatures proved better—stamps meant one more thing for every booth's staff to track, and a pen doesn't get lost.
Simple mechanic, real consequences: guaranteed foot traffic to every booth, a guaranteed interaction for every sponsor, and something to do on a Thursday afternoon.
[The Execution]
Roughly fifteen products, from thousands of stickers, postcards, and card decks down to 300 blankets.
Matching the artwork was the easy part. Matching the feel meant product that could stand next to a retail brand: a checkered beanie on a custom weave and a shorter modern fit, blankets with a waved stitch developed in place of stock templates, custom jacquard for a headband, and a five-panel fleece hat the team had never produced before.
The calendar is its own complexity. April debrief. Summer ideation. Fall production. A first event in mid-January that will not move. Then five resorts through May—and it starts again.
The system changed the sponsor conversation too.
Partners could co-brand into festival products—like the Harman Kardon blanket—instead of printing a logo on a black ski strap.
"It would be so easy to just sell a product. This project proves we build community past the product.”
