Hold on, don't get me wrong... I am not going to Steemfest myself due to financial reasons. Blegh, had a huge fine in Switzerland and my own car broke down last night. GG life. At the looks of it, I even had to terminate the planned vacation to Thailand for this shit. So why this title? Welllll, since I've been on Steemit, sharing my photography here changed my point of view of "sharing" and "value". I understood the potential and capabilities of this platform, so I wanted to make something for the community to contribute.
A few days ago, I saw @Roelandp upvoted one of my posts and was curious why this legend and witness chose to upvote a 7+ day old post, maybe it was a curation trail he is following(?). For those who do not know Roeland, he is organizing Steemfest 3. Also, I got reminded of an idea about making a banner for Steemians to use as a signature so everyone knows who they can meet at Steemfest. It was 
Anyway, back to the idea. I didn't like the idea of putting my name on it, it's just not how I work. Why? I simply do not put my name on works that I create, unless it is a signed fine art print. I feel that it would 'damage' the work, distract the intended message it deserves and it wouldn't add any value to it since it should be all about SteemFest and not my name. When it's good, people will value it and give it the credit without asking/demanding for it. When people want to know who made it, just make sure you'll do a good job so they remember your name.
I was in a creative mood and checked out @SteemFest and @Roelandp his blog. I made three sketches with a different color theme. I remember I have spoken with Roeland for 5 secs on Discord while he was doing an interview, at that time a question like "Hey Roeland, do you need a photographer for SteemFest" slipped through my mind, but I thought it would be too "cold" to ask. Anyway, this was my -only- way to reach out to him and show him what I made. After I send him the sketches and popped the question if he would like the idea, he responded. Obviously, I had nothing brand-related to SteemFest to work with so I didn't think it would be used right away.
My feeling was right, however, a day later he told me he might want to use the idea, but have it designed in the style of SteemFest itself. I didn't hesitate to invite myself designing it. It would be nice to do something back for the active community who are going to finally meet each other in real life or see each other again. Using the banner would make it easier to find out who is going, so you can plan a meet-up ahead of time.
Roeland send me the brand-kit of SteemFest that I could work with. We exchanged designs for feedback and we got on the right track pretty fast. Love the way how the internet works ;-).
The first thing that I noticed about the image is that it was at certain spots overexposed, which would lead to unnecessary distractions on the image. Also, the photograph is pretty vibrant and had a high contrast look and feel. For an image itself it's great, but working with text on top of it would lead to... yep... unnecessary distraction. So first things first, getting rid of the distractions and crushing the blacks to make it a little bit more flat was the first thing that I needed to do before I could start.
Adding a color theme to the photograph would be great and it will make it easier to read the text. But still, I found it was missing some flair.
The spelling though... hahah. Kracow. This is probably what you get when you talk in Dutch, and design in English simultaneously.
Almost there... A key point of being a designer and a designer is listening to the people you work with. The other part is, translating it into a design that they need, and want.
He gave me great input and feedback which gave me a better idea and understanding of how he would like to have it designed. After he said what the theme is going to be about, I could give it the finishing touch it needed. So, here it is! The final design for the banner that you, (and only this design), can use if you want to let everyone know that you're going to Steemfest!
<center>
<a href="https://steemfest.com"><img src="https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRMkAHumnEPDfPeekPBwqzpxfb99XWeJnBNKg6LgDEWd3/meet-me-at-steemfest-in-krakow.jpg" alt="Meet me at SteemFest 2018 in Kraków" /></a>
</center>
Or if you would like to have rounded corners like 
<center>
<a href="https://steemfest.com"><img src="https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/rubencress/TdasrV2W-steemfest-round-corner.png" alt="Meet me at SteemFest 2018 in Kraków" /></a>
</center>
Are you going to SteemFest? Use the banner and let your friends and fans know if you haven't already. And more importantly: Have a lot of fun!
Cheers,
Ruben