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Archtober stands as a year-round celebration of architecture and design, fostering a deep connection between communities and the built environment. Established in 2010 as an annual month-long festival, this platform has evolved into a resource for happenings in NYC. Collaborating with an extensive network of partners, Archtober presents an array of events that include tours, lectures, workshops, panels, and exhibitions.
Each October, the Archtober Festival takes on a new brand and theme. Since 2020, Greater has worked with Archtober to imagine the yearly brand, create custom illustrations, build a temporary skin for the site, and so much more.
The 2024 festival marks our fifth year partnering with Archtober, and this year we explored the theme: Tracing the Future.
Once we landed on the "Tracing the Future" theme, we started asking ourselves what the future of New York would look like.
After exploring various inspirations, we were drawn to concept of retro-futurism. Mid-century artists who embodied this style match felt perfect for this theme, as they envisioned an optimistic future filled with glass, curves, and limitless possibilities. However, we wanted to create the artwork from the perspective of the Architect, so we created the illustrations with rough pencil line work that mimics and minimal color fills that feel like pulling a page out of an architects sketch pad.
Expanding on this style that blends modern ideas with the charm of retro aesthetics, we developed four distinct artworks that touched on themes that were being highlighted in this years festival: Green City, Coastal Resiliency, Carless City, and Sustainable Housing.
To translate the illustration style to a cohesive site design we considered elements that felt like the imagined era: a new display font, rounded edges, fine lines, and a duotone color palette. This allowed us to create a nostalgic feeling, similar to a classic car's dashboard.
Since 2021, we encouraged Archtober to launch a collection of merch to their shop that corresponds with the yearly theme. For "Tracing the Future," we designed an array of products, including t-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, tote bags, posters, notepads, and puzzles.
The entrance of the Center for Architecture building joined our Archtober celebrations, covered in a special 2024 vinyl wall wrap.
We designed an insert for the New York Times to invite more people to enjoy the festival, highlighting this year's partners, sponsors, and media supporters.
This year, Archtober introduced an exciting design competition to engage audiences in a fresh way. They invited architects, illustrators, designers, and creatives of all kinds to submit illustrations that explored the theme "Tracing the Future."
For this, we created a postcard design that would feature each of the 5 winner illustrations.
We also created a variety of digital assets for emails, ads, and social media.
Working with Greater for the past five years has changed how we think about collaboration. Alex and Jon have repeatedly gone above and beyond to help shape how we think about our own work and what Archtober can achieve, helping us expand and improve not only our outputs but our internal workflows and processes.
