For the last two years, Horsebites (aka Richard Minino) has created the official logo for The Fest. Along with running his own design company, Minino has provided album covers for bands like Dead To Me, Strike Anywhere, and New Mexican Disaster Squad. Below, he gives us the dirt on how he hooked up with Tony Weinbender and The Fest crew. Enjoy.

I was lucky enough to do the art for the Fest 6 last year and it was a really great learning experience on how to brand a music festival. I thought I did a pretty decent job last year and I wanted to top it for this year’s Fest. Tony Weinbender told me since it was Fest 7 and it started on Halloween that he wanted the art to have something dealing with gambling (i.e. lucky #7) [along with] a Halloween feeling.

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I thought they were good ideas but I didn’t know how I was going to accomplish that. I tried one version and it didn’t quite hit the target. It had dice, eyeballs and slime. It was cool but something was missing. The reason I feel like people liked last year’s logo was because it was sort of like a mascot and it was fun.

I tried again with an alligator head but I was hesitant at first because I didn’t want the design to come off as the Florida Gators logo. So I made it a gator skull for the spooky feel to it and then I added hair, a hat and busted sunglasses. This gave it the fun feel to it because honestly, have you ever seen a gator with hair? I wishEverything worked out great and with the help of Team Doom, the Fest [art] came together really well. In my opinion, it’s the best one visually.

Other example of Richard’s work:

Tags: Horse Bites, Tales From The Fest, The Fest, The Fest 6, The Fest 7, guest column, tour dates //