About Winter Weekends

Port Fairy Winter Weekends is run by a dedicated volunteer group committed to celebrating their town as only die-hard vollies can. The festival connects people to people, and people to the town, showcasing everything from performance, music, painting, design, photography and craft to fashion, film, literature, food, wine and sausage dogs: an important one.

We were thrilled to be asked to reinvent the Winter Weekends brand design. There were no boundaries given and boy, did we enjoy that. Our approach was to showcase the fabric of Port Fairy, highlighting the wonderfully diverse characters who call the town home and using the curious little treasures you might find at the Merrijig, your Nana’s house or tucked away inside a boat, as decorative elements throughout the identity.

We wanted to turn the focus inland, away from the beach, which is so often the main player and look at the qualities that make Port Fairy unique. Take the beach away and you reveal a quirky, regal, slightly daggy little town that is quiet, characterful and completely charming.

We leaned into the sleepy melancholy of a Port Fairy winter through the copywriting, calling on locals and visitors alike to embrace the cold, get out of the house and join in. Because winter here is pretty bloody good when you actually get amongst it.

The rebrand is going on three years strong, with some of the original posters still proudly plastered across the town. Leeroy told us we’d captured the big heart of the festival, which felt like a giant triumph. The festival and Port Fairy itself mean a lot to us, so being able to bottle a little bit of that spirit and put it out into the world was pretty special.