The Event

The 500 Festival Mini-Marathon is a tradition well known to Indianapolis and runners around the world. Since 1977, the 13.1 mile half-marathon course has lead runners through the streets of Indianapolis, and on to the famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway race track, where the Indianapolis 500 mile auto race is held annually. The Mini, as it’s referred to by locals, has grown to become one of the most popular running events in the country—selling out of it’s 35,000 registration openings, along with another 4,000 registered runners for the annual 5k race that accompanies the Mini, for the past 7 years. The Mini is the largest half-marathon in America, and the fifth largest running event in the country.

Form

500 Festival Associates, Inc., the administrative organization for the event, came to Artistic Awards for a solution that would help reflect the race as the premier running event it had grown into. After exploring medals from races around the world, these key positioning factors became clear:

• SIZE: Increasing the size beyond the standard 2–2.5 inch medal was important to reflect the size of the event.
• WEIGHT: Since the medals won’t be made out of precious metals, perceptual value is important. Increasing the weight of the medals also increases the perceived value.
• FINISH: To reflect the energy and youthfulness of the event, a shiny and smooth finish would catch attention and sunlight.

With key positioning factors defined, Artistic Awards’ design team had their work cut out for them—Make the new medals Bigger, Heavier, Shinier, with as little increase in budget as possible.

Concepts

Keeping the necessities of form in mind—we also knew the best way to imbue a higher perceptual value would be to give the medals conceptual value. Enhancing the connection between the Runners, Indianapolis, the 500 Festival, and the Indianapolis 500, was important to project a unique context for a running race that has become the kickoff event for an entire month of national events in Indianapolis.

Our designers used a “Visual Weight” strategy to satisfy the projects needs both formally, conceptually, and budgetary:

• RIBBON: Designing the neck ribbon with forceful lines, created by a checkered pattern in perspective would not only draw the eye down the chest to the medal, but also accentuate the hanging position of the medal.
• MEDAL: Use bold, but considered shapes to create broad but interesting surfaces to reflect light and visual weight.

After a great deal of exploration 6 solid concepts emerged as valid and interesting ideas.

After deliberating extensively over the conceptual, compositional, and formal merits of each concept proposal, it was found that so far, none had found the proper balance between form, imagery, and meaning. Looking through a group of original sketches, it was obvious to meet our expectations of form, we needed to tone down the medal, and simplify some shapes to create the bold and reflective surfaces we needed.

Final

Using the response from 500 Festival, Inc., we created another design that satisfied all conditions of our goals for the project.

The figure bleeds in and out of the positive and negative spaces of a close up of a checkered flag (centered where the corners of four checks meet) at the moment just before breaking the tape at the finish line.

Ultimately, it was the solution that had everything 500 Festivals was looking for. It had the size, the weight, the emotion, and the look they wanted to communicate that the 500 Festival Mini-Marathon is an event of importance and magnitude that begins an entire month of events leading up to the most famous racing event in the world.

Overall, Artistic Awards was able to find a solution that balanced all the parameters and goals for the project with successful design strategy. It is only through understanding what our clients needs are, that we are able to provide a viable solution that results in valuable, meaningful solutions.