For D'enderend Los festival, I was tasked with creating a concept to elevate their experience. Which meant the birth of Ecliptic.

Concepting

The challenge I needed to solve was to elevate the experience with a concept that could become a brand that we could build on with a limited budget and long term focus.

One of the challenges D'enderend fases in its early life is differentiating itself in an over saturated festival market. This is further complicated by the limited brand recognition, visitors and budget.

This meant that most of the times they had to rely on unknown younger artists to fill their event. While this isn't a problem in and on itself it does complicate building the brand and selling tickets.

My solution: a signature DJ with its own rich theming and storytelling. The idea behind this is as follows D'enderend always has a special DJ without extra budget as everyone could be Ecliptic. This is due to his/her mysterious story and mask. Together with D'enderend we also produced custom tracks, show elements and I created a branding guide for Ecliptic's story and music.

Story

So who or what is Ecliptic? Ecliptic represents the human form of a solar eclipse. This concept is also central in his/her music, visuals and storytelling. For example the music plays with themes of light and darkness to represent the contrasting nature of a solar eclipse. Think about a dark techno beat or a light color kick rawstyle track, but also in lyrics these themes are central.

For the current intro show of Ecliptic I wrote this text to tell the story shortly before his/her sets:

"An obscured light creating simultaneous light and darkness. An eclipse casting it's shadow which also reveals a source of pure light. The future starts today. Together we forge a path of unity through diversity. We proudly present to you...... Ecliptic."

With this intro I tried to tell the story of the eclipse's contrasting nature: "simultaneous light and darkness. An eclipse casting its shadow which also reveals a source of pure light." and I tried to make the connection between this and a concept of human emotion which mirrors this discrepancy: "Together we forge a path of unity through diversity."