Sun God Festival '26

Sun God Festival is UC San Diego’s biggest annual event, bringing together around twenty thousand students who show up ready to celebrate, listen to music, and feel connected to the campus community. For this year’s festival, Rylee Boyles served as the Art Director, taking on the responsibility of shaping the entire visual identity. She created the branding, merchandise, digital assets, templates, and the website, ensuring that everything felt unified and true to the spirit of the event. The theme, Rebellious Playground, came from the Festival Directors and Marketing Directors, who envisioned something loud, grunge, youthful, and full of attitude. The idea blended skater culture, Y2K energy, and a maximalist approach that encouraged bold creative choices. Rylee focused on combining 3D elements with flat 2D graphics to build a layered look that felt playful and intentionally chaotic. The final visual language featured saturated colors, rough textures, sticker‑like cutouts, and compositions that resembled a collage pulled from a skate park wall. The process moved from loose sketches to refined assets, landing on a visual identity that reflected the campus’s character and momentum.

ASCE commissioned a merchandise collection that blended nostalgia, collectibility, and contemporary streetwear through grunge-inspired graphics and playful Y2K influences. Guided by the festival’s rebellious, skater-esque identity, the collection was designed to feel expressive, wearable, and deeply tied to student culture. The lineup featured embroidered beanies, trucker hats, fitted raglans, oversized thermals, zip-up hoodies, crewnecks, and graphic tees, many of which sold out within minutes and quickly became recognizable staples across campus. Distinctive pieces such as the striped zip-up hoodies and heavily graphic crewnecks reflected the collection’s emphasis on bold visual identity and high-quality construction. Much of the typography and artwork was hand-drawn digitally on an iPad, giving the collection a raw, personal quality that reinforced the DIY aesthetic present throughout the festival branding. The development process was highly collaborative between AS Graphic Studio and Triton Outfitters, with careful attention placed not only on graphics but also on premium blanks and material quality through brands such as Shaka Wear and Cotton Collective. By balancing modern silhouettes with bold graphic expression and durable construction, the collection became both a visual extension of the Sun God Festival experience and one of the most successful merchandise releases in the festival’s history.

A custom loading screen featuring an interactive 3D Tamagotchi greeted visitors before transitioning into a live countdown to the festival,immediately building anticipation while immersing students in the site’s rebellious playground aesthetic. Paired with a spray paint cursor that allowed users to tag and draw directly across the screen, the experience encouraged students to express their own creativity and interact with the site in a playful, chaotic way that reinforced the festival’s grunge and Y2K-inspired identity. The homepage further captured this atmosphere through animated visuals, bold typography, and an interactive artist image carousel that highlighted performers in a dynamic and engaging format. Beyond providing festival information, the site encouraged exploration through immersive features and hidden interactions, including a dedicated game page where students could play Flappy Fluffy, a custom festival-themed reimagining of Flappy Bird. Together, these elements transformed the website from a purely informational platform into an interactive digital experience that reflected the energy, creativity, and self-expression associated with this year’s Sun God Festival.

A.S. Graphic Studio
Rylee Boyles, Angela Hu, Joshric Aurea

Triton Outfitters
Andrew Alvarado, Ivy Xu, Ella Winter, Israel Magallon

ASCE
Olivia Tsou, Ishani Solanki, Jiya Patel, Saanvi Tiwari, Justin Lu, Joanne Cacho, Unice Liu, Andy Tran

Photographers
Tobin Caldwell, Jackson Manansala, Ting Blount, Noah Gallardo, Regine Delossantos, Nicoletta Gagliano

Models
Tajin Olivas, Ava Boado, Zoe Beggin, Kacy Nguyen, Ari Pasha, Isabella Contreras, Sophia Tirado, Skate Club at UC San Diego