Shabang Music Festival

During my last semesters at Cal Poly, I completed a five-month internship with Shabang Music Festival in San Luis Obispo, California. Shabang is an annual independent music, arts, and camping festival held on the Central Coast, known for bringing together indie, alternative, and electronic artists alongside immersive art installations, workshops, local vendors, and community-focused experiences. What began as a small gathering organized by Cal Poly students has grown into one of the region’s most recognized music festivals, attracting thousands of attendees each year while maintaining its grassroots, creative spirit. During my internship, I collaborated with the amazing design team on a variety of design projects, gaining hands-on experience creating visual content for a large-scale live event and helping promote a festival centered on music, art, and community.
One of the primary challenges of this project was creating a cohesive visual identity across multiple platforms while adapting the brand’s energetic and whimsical personality to different formats. The merchandise campaign required balancing polished product photography with a more fantastical, imaginative aesthetic that reflected the festival’s theme. Developing compositions that seamlessly blended studio photography with surreal environments required careful attention to lighting, masking, and visual consistency. Additionally, designing social media content, apparel graphics, and a yearly calendar required maintaining a unified brand language while ensuring each deliverable felt engaging and unique to its intended audience.
These challenges were addressed through a collaborative and iterative design process that emphasized consistency, experimentation, and attention to detail. For the merchandise campaign, studio photography techniques and careful post-production workflows were used to create seamless compositions that connected the apparel with Shabang’s fantasy-inspired visual identity. Photoshop masking, layering, and color adjustments helped integrate models into imaginative environments while maintaining a polished, professional appearance. Across social media, calendar design, and merchandise graphics, I established a cohesive visual system through consistent typography, illustration styles, and photographic direction. By adapting the brand language to each format while keeping the overall experience unified, the final deliverables effectively captured the creative energy and community-driven spirit of Shabang Music Productions.
Merchandise photography campaign
Merchandise design
Social media content
Festival calendar

Merchandise Shoot

For this merchandise campaign for Shabang Music Productions, I directed, photographed, and edited a series of promotional images showcasing the brand’s apparel to be posted on social media. All products were photographed in a studio setting, allowing for consistent lighting and clean product shots. In post-production, I created custom Photoshop compositions by masking and blending the models into a fantastical landscape.

Baby Tee Merch Design

For the festival merchandise collection, I designed a baby tee that captured the whimsical and magical energy of the event. Our merch reflects our theme this year, largely inspired by medieval and fantasy elements. The typography featured on the back was hand drawn before being digitized in Adobe Illustrator to create a clean, scalable vector graphic. This design can be seen worn on models throughout the merch shoot above. The front design incorporates playful wizard illustrations created by Gabrielle Pontius

Social Media Content

In addition to the merchandise, I designed social media content for Shabang’s Instagram, creating a series of engaging carousel posts that combined photography, illustration, and dynamic layouts to reflect the festival’s vibrant atmosphere. Each post was designed to build excitement, communicate the event experience, and encourage audience engagement through visually compelling storytelling. Above are a few of my favorites

Mid- Year Build calendar

I also designed a festival calendar spanning May 2026 through May 2027, strategically beginning mid-year to align with the festival’s primary sales cycle. The calendar features steamy photographs of the festival’s build team, highlighting the people responsible for constructing the event behind the scenes. Thank you build team!