Helsinki Design
Week 2018

An identity for the largest design festival in the Nordics

Arts & Culture
#design #identity

Trusting design or designing trust?

The festival of new ideas

Founded in 2005, Helsinki Design Week is the largest design festival in the Nordic countries. Held annually in September, the festival presents design from a number of fields as well as fashion, architecture and urban culture. In 2018, Kuudes was invited to create the annual identity based on the theme TRUST.

We worked with the existing Helsinki Design Week identity – known for the ubiquitous red beams that have been there for years. We turned these colour blocks into a moiré-style pattern, a glitch that is dynamic and ever-changing. The result is a contemporary take on the identity, still making it recognizable and familiar.

Imagining trust

The key element of the identity is the photography, based on a strong and bold image concept created together with Koski Syväri and shot by Tuukka Koski. The motifs stem from the five main categories of festival events: collaboration, education, sustainability, city development and trust in the future. Each of these abstract themes were depicted in concrete, materialized forms. Together with the taglines, they spur your imagination to look at trust from diverse perspectives. The set-ups are engaging, even provocative, while the union of lights, shadows, materials and surroundings make sure that you keep on scrutinizing the photographs – and finding new viewpoints with every glance.

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For more information:

Piëtke Visser
Creative Director
pietke.visser@kuudes.com