As the COVID-19 pandemic continued to ravage the live music industry, venues like Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom & The Other Side in Denver, CO struggled to come up with ways of staying afloat while engaging our lifelong patrons. Knowing that Colorado hosts an abundance of uber-talented graphic designers, we launched a design contest with cash prizes for new Cervantes’ merchandise designs. We wanted to engage the local artist community and find out what Cervantes’ means to them and see how they would translate that into their own artwork. As soon as the finished designs began to roll in, we knew we had a great thing going. Through month-long internal deliberations combined with online patron voting, we whittled down the catalog of nearly 40 design entries into a list of the top 10. After reaching out to each of the top 10 artists to get personal depictions explaining why they created the design they did, the 10 designs were then ranked and prizes given out.
Designer's Inspiration: ANDREW SONDHEIM
“My design started with the eye derivative of the Cervantes' Masterpiece Logo and also utilized the rays found in The Other Side Logo. Beyond the logo, the eye is representative of the close-up, intimate experience that comes with the venue. A lot of the acts I've seen at Cervantes' have had psychedelic elements and been funky in nature so I wanted the feeling of my design to reflect that. From there, I contained all the design elements wrapping them into a twisted hourglass shape and paired it with a font that felt similarly experimental.”
We then built a brand new online merch store with over 35 different new products to choose from featuring the designs of these local artists. Once the store was launched, we were blown away by the response from the online community as we began to fulfill hundreds of orders from all across the country! The launch of this store could not have come at a better time as we face yet another government mandated shutdown and revert back to zero dollars in revenue with massive overhead expenses looming each month. We are excited to announce that we will be hosting a special holiday sale beginning Friday, November 27th offering 20% off all orders above $100! We have been floored by the willingness of our patrons to proudly represent Cervantes’ with this new merch line and greatly appreciate anyone willing to help us spread the word about this new method of supporting our home from afar.
