Each of Fela’s album covers takes us on a different journey with each detail being intentional; it echoes the core issues and topics discussed in his music. Lemi Ghariokwu, the designer behind many of Fela’s album covers, created the illustrations by hand with little to no design briefs. His work is deep, unique and personalized and that is exactly what I did with Perambulator Display. This font was rendered from the text containing Fela’s name in the 1983 album cover, Perambulator. I created Perambulator Display as an ode to Fela for the Felabration event that took place on October 15-17. Felabration is an annual celebration of Fela’s music, life and experiences and this project was a bid to design the brand collateral for the festival.

Fela’s legendary status goes beyond music. It transcends to art, fashion, lifestyle, and culture, which greatly influences the Nigerian creative culture today. I created Perambulator Display to celebrate Fela using a hand-drawn, all-caps, OpenType display font consisting of 11 letter accented glyphs. This project was very exciting for me because of how I was able to use the shape and form of the typography to serve as the guiding principle for the festival's design system. I used this system to design assets for the stage set, merch, ID cards and posters.