Totally Okay has created a “fun and accessible” identity for Sheffield’s podcast festival, Crossed Wires.
Launched in 2024, the festival positions itself as “celebration of the podcasts you love, the hosts you obsess over, and the stories that stick with you long after your headphones are off.”
It was created by local entrepreneur James O’Hara, podcast producer Dino Sofos, whose company makes shows like Miss Me? with Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver, and Alice Levine, the writer, broadcaster and host of one of the world’s most successful podcasts, My Dad Wrote A Porno.
Radio One DJ Greg James joined as creative director this year.
The identity is built around hand-drawn elements, like speech bubbles and a device known as the “squiggle,” which come to life in print and on posters, as well as on-stage visuals and digital channels.
Totally Okay’s identity for the Crossed Wires podcast festival
Levine explains that the podcast world is well-served with industry events that “feel like conferences.” But that from the start, Crossed Wires was meant to feel very different.
“Our brief was that this is for listeners and fans of podcasts, and it had to feel really fun and accessible,” she explains.
“Podcasting is obviously quite a solo, insular experience. So we had to put across the idea that this was all your favourite acts in a way you don’t usually get to experience them – something that felt more like a gathering or a party.”
Deakin admits that the initial ideas he presented to the team “went slightly awry” based on visual metaphors around discussion and tussle, like photos of judo matches and West Side Story face-offs.
But in discussions with Levine, he realised the seeds of the identity were already there, in his very earliest explorations.
“I had these initial doddles, which I thought were too unsophisticated to use,” he says. “But they had this really rough, hand-drawn quality that we ended up keeping throughout the identity.”
He also shared visual references from nostalgic 1990s sweets, like Parma Violets and Refreshers.
Totally Okay’s identity for the Crossed Wires podcast festival
This less slick approach fitted with the Crossed Wires ethos, and its home city, which prides itself on not taking itself too seriously.
Deakin says the design and the production – wheatpasting posters outside the venues – worked together to create the desired effect.
“There was a raw, edgy quality to it all,” Deakin says. “You have the liveliness of the speech bubbles, and then these dog-eared posters which I think were essential to how things were communicated. It would have felt very different if we’d had these smooth, clean posters, and vector graphics.”
This year’s Crossed Wires expanded in scope and scale, with more shows at the main venues and a three-day fringe, run by BBC Sounds, which took over the old John Lewis building in Sheffield city centre.
Levine and Deakin were determined to ramp up the identity for year two, doubling down on the graphics and pushing the verbal identity further.
“For the first year we had to do a lot of education, because live podcasting is a relatively new development,” Levine says. “We had to explain to people what it was, and why they should come.
“It felt like we had more freedom this year, and I wanted the copy to be intriguing – a bit more of a sense of humour, and a bit less on-the-nose.”
The writing process centres on “a huge, chaotic Google Doc” and Levine, a comedy writer, says she “freewheels” by throwing lots of ideas at Deakin to see what sticks.
This year’s lines included “On stage, off script” and “Meet the voices in your head,” and Deakin says it could be challenging making them work visually, because the identity uses sentence case text.
“That adds a problematic element, of having ascenders and descenders that need to fit well together,” he says.
The typeface is Founders Grotesk by Klim Type Foundry, while a striking fluorescent green dominated this year’s colour palette, or “that bloody green” as Levine puts it.
They had to find a specialist screen printer who could create that tone, and there were complications with it working on the wheatpaste posters.
“It was a real chore to get that green, but we did, and it looked amazing,” Deakin says. “Its the main thing people commented on, and so it was worth the struggle, because it really lifted up the whole visual language.”
The on-stage graphics were another important visual element. The spaces that host Crossed Wires events are very different, from the iconic Crucible theatre to pop-up stages.
“We needed something that made it feel like a festival, particularly for those shows which are two chairs on a stage,” Levine says.
The on-stage graphics at Crossed Wires festival, 2024.
At Levine’s urging, Deakin worked with local woodworker Giles Grover to create sculptures that resemble the squiggle and the speech bubble. “I think they’re so beautiful, they way they come out of the stage floor, and seem to float and disappear,” Levine says.
After a few weeks’ respite, the team has already started thinking about the 2026 festival – Deakin says the jumbled Google Doc for their ideas is back up and running.
They both want to push the designs again next year, without losing the elements of the identity which have worked so well.
“People say they feel like the event has always been here,” Levine says. “This visual language looks so embedded, and feels so mature, that it feels like we’ve been an event that’s been running for 20 years, not two.”
Totally Okay’s posters for the Crossed Wires podcast festival
Totally Okay’s on-stage graphics for the Crossed Wires podcast festival
Alice Levine and Greg James, wearing the Crossed Wires squiggle on a t-shirt
Totally Okay’s identity for the Crossed Wires podcast festival
Totally Okay’s identity for the Crossed Wires podcast festival