Zach McKee - Montreux Jazz Festival Miami

HOW DO YOU TRANSLATE A LEGENDARY JAZZ FESTIVAL TO MIAMI?
YOU LET THE CITY SHAPE A NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE.

Montreux Jazz Festival Miami brings one of the world’s most iconic Swiss festivals to a new coastline, reframing its legacy through the lens of Miami’s color, architecture, and nightlife. Across the 2025 and 2026 editions, I was brought in as a freelance lead to own the visual expression of the Miami experience, setting the direction for how the festival showed up across graphics and interstitial stage visuals.

In 2025, my focus was on establishing a visual system that could bridge Montreux’s heritage with Miami’s flair, building a graphic language that felt both classic and coastal. I defined and executed key looks for social, OOH, and signage, making sure the festival felt at home in Miami while still reading instantly as Montreux.

In 2026, we treated that first year as a foundation and pushed the system further, refining hierarchy, expanding layouts, and dialing in how the identity behaved in motion and at scale. I continued to own the graphics across social campaigns, outdoor placements, stage visuals, and wayfinding, effectively steering the creative direction for the Miami editions so fans could feel the continuity while each year still had its own personality.