Against a warm September evening, the sound of a train screeching across the tracks, momentarily drowning out the rhythm of jazz music, is all that can be heard by the thousands of Webster locals who cram into the streets of Old Webster for its annual Jazz and Blues Festival.

For local business Sandbox Creative, the 2017 Festival will mark the eighth straight year  the agency has been chosen to promote the festival through the creation of its marketing materials. Each of these seven years, Sandbox has designed the event’s iconic posters, as well as the program covers, flyers, t-shirts, business cards, priority passes, and street banners. The agency’s challenge lies in creating excitement around blues music, a genre that is typically associated with the dark and moody. The organizers of the Jazz and Blues Festival strive for the event to purvey a more fun, festival, street party feel, and Sandbox incorporates a mix of bright colors and designs to fulfill that objective. For Sandbox’s head, Dave Cox, the most rewarding part of the process is seeing the t-shirts he designed being worn out and about around Webster Groves. The t-shirts, which are given away to event volunteers, are sold the following year if there are extras. “I think it’s cool that people like the shirt enough to wear it throughout the year, not just the day of the event,” says Dave.

Sandbox Creative landed the Jazz and Blues Festival gig in 2010. After the company moved to Old Webster in 2008, they sought to connect with the business community and the Webster Groves community as a whole. During the Jazz and Blues Festival that year, they hosted a party, and for the private party, they designed a poster that played off the jazz and blues theme. The posters that they designed, both in 2008 and 2009, caught the attention of the event organizers, and Sandbox was asked to design an official poster for the event. What started out as a simple poster design snowballed into creating all the support materials for the Jazz and Blues Festival, resulting in about 100 hours worth of work each year. For Sandbox Creative, all that work pays off. Not only has the agency been chosen to create the marketing materials every year since 2010, but also their work has created awareness around their company that they ordinarily might not have earned. People know of Sandbox Creative because of their creative involvement in the Old Webster Jazz and Blues Festival. As a Webster local himself, Dave will attest that his work with the Jazz and Blues Festival is an exciting chance to work with a great event in a fabulous venue.