Northern Spark is a new MN Festival modeled on a nuit blanche or “white night” festival—a dusk to dawn participatory art event along the Mississippi and surrounding areas. It will take place the evening of June 4 (sunset 8:55 pm) till the morning of June 5, 2011 (sunrise 5:28 am).

Matthew Rezac did the art direction and the identity. On Matthew’s site he describes

The identity was informed by both the historical use of rivers as navigational devices and the literary uses of river as metaphor—and catalyst—for adventure. This idea of journey is expressed through a library of custom pictograms that represent the various types of art, sites, and tools one will encounter and use throughout the night. On the web site these pictograms serve as visual tags (used to categorize the projects and sites) or information portals (revealing fun or historical facts about each object).

I had the privilege of working with Matthew on the web component which inclucdes a website with over 80 projects, 45 venues, and 51 partners. Also a mobile site was created for the night of the event having all information that one would need while exploring the cities. Because of the scale of the event we made a web application on the website to plan out your night by adding projects to “My Night” which can be accessed from a mobile device.