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Project Overview
Technical depth the market never saw
ProBuild® is a regional distributor of premium building materials and sanitary solutions, operating out of Saudi Arabia. The company represents international manufacturers including VitrA and Ramon Soler, supplying residential developments, commercial towers, hospitality projects and healthcare facilities across the Kingdom.
For six consecutive years Storm has partnered with Maple Arts as Main Media Sponsor for FAMA, Canada's largest annual Festival of Arabic Music and Arts, held across the Greater Toronto Area through music, film and live performance.
A festival brand is judged twice. Once by the diaspora audience who will know immediately whether the culture has been handled with respect, and once by a wider Toronto audience who need a reason to attend something outside their own tradition.
For the 2024 edition the task was to evolve the identity without compromising cultural authenticity, for an audience that spans several generations and several relationships to the culture.
Project Details
Client
Maple Arts
Sector
Media & Entertainment
Location
Greater Toronto Area, Canada
Services
Brand Identity · Visual System · Art Direction · Event Branding · Campaign Creative · Signage & Environment · Social Media Content
Engagement
Website
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The Challenge
Evolving a brand an audience owns
Cultural festivals face a problem commercial brands do not. The audience feels ownership. Change the identity too little and the festival looks static against a city full of competing events. Change it too much and the community reads it as the culture being softened for outside consumption.
FAMA also has to work across a generational split. An older audience holds the tradition as it was. A younger, Canadian-raised audience holds it alongside a Toronto identity, and will not attend something that presents as heritage preservation.
The brand had to move forward every edition while proving each time that nothing had been given away.
WHAT WE DID
- Evolved the identity for the 2024 edition without breaking continuity with earlier years
- Built a contemporary visual system grounded in Arab visual heritage
- Set art direction that reads as current to a Toronto audience and authentic to a diaspora one
- Designed the event branding across music, film and live performance strands
- Produced campaign creative for a multicultural, mixed-generation audience
- Designed signage and environmental graphics across venues
- Built social media content on the same system rather than off to the side
- Held the standard across six consecutive editions as a long-term partner
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Storm 4D Method®
From research to reality
1/4 Discover
Reviewed five previous editions, what the audience recognises as FAMA, and where a contemporary audience was not being reached.
2/4 Define
Set the line between evolution and departure, so each edition can move without the community reading it as loss.
3/4 Design
Built the visual system and art direction to hold Arab heritage and contemporary Toronto in the same frame.
4/4 Deliver
Delivered event branding, campaign creative, signage and social content as one system, edition after edition.
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Scope of Work
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Client Testimonial
Wafa Al Zaghal
CEO & Founder, Maple Arts
