Feel the excitement as today is the start of this year’s Auckland Pride Festival! The festival runs from February 2 until February 18.
The Auckland Pride Festival celebrates the creative talents of our LGBTIQ+ communities. Now on its sixth year, the 2018 programme features over 80 events – including theatre, cabaret, comedy, dance, live music, and a whole lot more.
To commemorate this year’s Auckland Pride Festival, we caught up with the really cool Nikkolai Osa, freelance digital and graphic designer, who is behind the striking designs for one of the events at this year’s festival, Legacy Project.
Name
Nikkolai Osa
What do you do?
I am a freelance digital and graphic designer. I created the website and designed the marketing for Legacy Project.
You said you did the design work for Legacy Project. What is Legacy Project?
Legacy Project is a theatre development programme created to support and develop emerging voices within the Auckland LGBT community. Each year during Auckland Pride Festival, Legacy Project showcases six awesome short plays written, directed, and starring some of the brightest theatre talents in Auckland.
How did you get involved with Legacy Project?
I have know Bruce Brown, Creator and Artistic Director for Legacy Project, for over eight years now and in 2013, he approached me about creating a website for this theatre idea he had. We launched in 2014 and we’re about to begin our fifth season next week!
Where did you draw your design inspiration from for this project?
Our design theme this year was ‘making waves’ and living your best life out loud, and I was drawn to pop art from the 1950s through to the 1970s, specifically Roy Lichtenstein’s use of comic book imagery such as speech bubbles and starvbursts in his works, and Andy Warhol’s portrait of Marilyn Monroe. You can never go wrong with Marilyn!
What was your design process like?
There are so many steps to get to the final image – choosing the right photograph, choosing the right colours, and placing the elements in the right place. I touch base with Bruce regularly to get his feedback and we must have gone through a dozen or so versions before we had our final image!
What’s your favourite thing about your designs?
In all honesty, my favourite thing is seeing it out in the real world – walking past a giant poster, picking up a flyer, seeing it in the Auckland Pride programme. Sometimes I still can’t believe that my work is being seen by thousands of people during Pride!
What’s the best thing about the Auckland Pride Festival?
I love seeing the creative and fun ways the LGBT community tell their stories – whether through the theatre, drag shows, or film.
Name one event at this year’s Auckland Pride Festival that is not to be missed.
Legacy Project, running February 8 to 16 of course!
Follow Nikkolai on Instagram and Twitter @nikkolaiosa.
