A fun signboard from a small restaurant in Mexico City, typeset completely in Hobo. This sign contains the name of the business and the main offerings: sandwiches, tacos, quesadillas, tostadas and sodas. God bless Mexican food.

Ma’Erra Production supports performance companies and artists in the structuring and management of their projects. “Building together” is at the heart of their approach: street performance is a collective work, shaped both on stage and behind the scenes. The visual identity highlights this creative process by exploring the construction of forms and deconstructing the elements of the set; stilts, costume patterns, scaffolding or music box mechanisms to reveal what is being played in the background.

The typography featuring Round Ultra supports this intention: its rounded and structured shapes evoke a construction in balance between organic and technical. The a and the o, very circular, echo the rhythms of street art, its apparatus, its percussions and scenic elements; the condensed aspect, stretched vertically, reminiscent of stilts, thus creating a direct link between typographic forms and the elements of the show.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with design studio Gretel, rebuilt its identity with the goal of putting the institution in direct conversation with the city that surrounds it. Typography is the primary device for achieving this. The type palette mainly works on two levels: outside-and-inside, or community-and-institution.

Inspired by Philadelphia’s rich visual texture of storefronts, street vendors, and murals, the vernacular type palette brings the voice of Philly into the museum and injects the identity system with contrast and spontaneity. The current library is curated (exemplified by the likes of Shatter, Cooper Black, and Balloon), but it is designed to continue growing over time. Each of these display typefaces can be used on various seasonal activations, or specifically assigned to exhibitions or departmental roles. ITC Pioneer was used for the recent exhibition The Time is Always Now, a survey of contemporary Black and African diasporic figurative art. Purple Haze is the designated typeface for PMA Members, and Megazoid is used for PMA Kids.

On the other hand, the institutional typographic voice serves an evergreen role: echoing the museum’s classical character while embodying Philadelphia’s industrial sensibility. The core typeface, Fairmount Serif—named for the Fairmount neighborhood—was custom-drawn by Ryan Bugden after a study of Philadelphia’s typographic history. Searching for a balance between the industrial structure of 1930s American sans-serifs and a classical features brought Hess Neobold forward as a key reference. Its designer Sol Hess attended PMSIA—the precursor to the museum—and later succeeded Frederic Goudy as Philadelphia-based Lanston Monotype’s type director. Fairmount Serif evolves the Hess Neobold model while incorporating more contemporaneous industrial cues. It remains relatively neutral alongside the museum’s broad palette of display faces while providing a distinct, authoritative voice of its own. Fairmount Serif was also used as a starting point in rendering the various institutional logos.

For the more workhorse level, Klarheit Grotesk serves as the museum’s body text typeface. It is set at small sizes across branding, materials, signage, and exhibition text.

See more images in Gretel’s case study.

Mockups of exhibition catalogs

Banners.

Seasonal program.

Speculative Enquiries: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Epistemic Technologies is a 2023 conference theme and research focus from the European Culture and Technology Lab+ (ECT Lab+), that explores how speculative design, AI, and the arts can reshape future technologies.

The posters are animated and visualize speculative versions of the title across different times and places.

Syndicat Grotesk, designed by edition.studio, is used by studio òbelo for the visual identity and catalog of IN–PLAY. Design for Sport at the ADI Design Museum in Milan. The typeface runs across print and exhibition materials, structuring titles, captions, and editorial content.

Building on the principle of the Olympic Charter, which recognizes sport as a fundamental human right, IN–PLAY. Design for Sport presents sports practice as a shared space and a platform for global dialogue. The exhibition explores cultural transformations in contemporary society, where design acts as a witness to a profound paradigm shift: projects, stories, data, and biomedical research collectively redefine the boundaries of competition.

Circus is movement, memory, and, above all, enchantment.

From an invitation by Sesc São Paulo came the challenge of visually translating the 8th edition of Circos, a festival that transforms the city into a contemporary big top. In August 2025, São Paulo became a meeting point for artists from 21 countries, weaving together cultures, languages, and timelines into a single sensory narrative.

Guided by the concept “Enchantment Beyond Time,” the project is built upon three pillars: memory, movement, and enchantment. These elements do not appear as isolated ideas, but as forces that intersect, shaping a living, pulsating identity in constant transformation.
Memory reveals itself through an aesthetic construction that evokes traditional circus imagery, with visual references that echo popular culture and classic spectacle forms. Movement emerges through the repetition and variation of geometric modules, creating patterns that vibrate, almost as if in rotation, mirroring the bodies of performers, their spins, leaps, and fluid gestures. Enchantment manifests in the intense color combinations and dynamic compositions that invite the viewer to wander, discover, and immerse themselves.

Graphic elements take center stage within the visual system. Built from simple shapes such as circles, triangles, and ellipses, they unfold into modular patterns that move between the contemporary and the ethnic. There is a sense of universality rooted in the local, as if each repetition carries a collective memory, reinterpreted through a new lens. These patterns are not static: at times they appear as bold surfaces, at others as fragments that invade compositions, creating rhythm, tension, and surprise.

Black and white photography acts as a counterpoint, grounding the project in the reality of the body and performance. While the graphic elements expand the imaginative realm, the images document the human gesture, establishing a dialogue between the tangible and the symbolic. This relationship reinforces the idea of time, where past and present coexist within the same visual space.

The color palette is bold and carefully orchestrated. Warm tones such as red, orange, and yellow interact with deep greens and purples, creating vibrant contrasts that evoke energy, diversity, and cultural strength. It is a palette that does not whisper, it projects. It occupies space, draws attention, and sustains the festive atmosphere of the circus.

L’appartement. Architectures du collectif is an exhibition presented from April 3 to June 6, 2026, at CAUE92 in Nanterre, France. From the gallery (translated from the French, with added links):

The exhibition highlights a remarkable collection of apartment buildings from the second half of the 20th century in the Hauts-de-Seine department. Underrated, even overlooked, these buildings form the more or less ordinary backdrop of the cities where so many of us have come to live. Yet to preserve and pass them on, we must first come to know them. Delving into the most intimate corners of these homes, the photographic project commissioned from Myr Muratet documents five inhabited buildings by architect Jacques Kalisz in Nanterre, and sensitively portrays an “extraordinary ordinary” that reveals the diversity of interiors and ways of living. In contrast, the refrigerators by Japanese artist Tokuko Ushioda radically condense domestic life in its most commonplace form. Finally, the exhibition launches a documentary, graphic, and digital project with the Atlas of Collective Housing in the Hauts-de-Seine (1945–2000), intended to establish a collection of residential architecture, a resource for all those interested in architecture.

Lyon-based studio Service Local used Install for the typography, supported by Neue Haas Grotesk.

First held in 2012, Changwon Sculpture Biennale is the only sculpture biennale in Korea. The 7th edition took place in 2024. Its title, “Silent Apple”, was taken from a line in “A Well-Ripened Apple” by acclaimed poet Kim Hyesoon. From the organizers:

The biennale will be introduced in four venues: Seongsan Art Hall, which has been the main exhibition venue for previous Changwon Sculpture Biennales; Seongsan Shell Mound (Historic Site No. 240), a shell tomb discovered in 1973; Dongnam Ground, a former industrial complex workplace; and the MoonShin Art Museum, shaped by a sculptor. The biennale aims to address horizontality in contemporary sculpture, women and labor, urban history and shifts, and changes in community.

Ted Hyunhak Yoon of Major Minority did the identity and graphic design using AC Affix by AllCaps. To accompany Affix, he used KIMM, a custom typeface designed by Jinhyun Park for the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials, as display font for Korean text. The website was created by Eunjoo Hong and Hyungjae Kim.

The Korean text typeface used inside the catalog is yet unidentified.

The Biennale Exemplaires is an occasion for exhibiting, showcasing, and highlighting the work produced by students and faculty at French-speaking fine art and design schools. It is also a venue for meeting and exchange, enriched by a symposium aligned with the research priorities of the participating schools. The main exhibition highlights a selection of recent, francophone publications deemed “exemplary”. To expand upon and complement this selection, each school produces a publication in a format of its choice. The biennial also includes satellite events, an exhibition at the Frac Lorraine, a festive evening, and a book fair featuring a selection of independent publishers. The sixth edition of the Biennale Exemplaires united fourteen schools and was held in Metz in March 2026.

The visual identity was designed by Léo Coquet (Institut Page / ÉSAL Metz) using Modula Ribbed (Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1995) and Drama Grotesque (Rafael Ribas, Poem, 2025).

BVH Stef is the new typeface designed by studio vu-huu for La Cité du Design in Saint-Étienne. The new visual identity – based on a large and playful variation of typographic characters – has been launched during the 13th International Design Biennial of Saint-Étienne in May 2025.

During the Biennial, Stef has also been used and displayed all around Saint-Étienne as a way to share the new visual identity in the whole city and to promote exhibitions and events related to the Biennial.

The current identity for art center Kunsthaus Potsdam was designed by Onck West, using Affairs and FT Kunst Grotesk throughout. From the studio’s case presentation:

Kunsthaus Potsdam was founded in 2000 by the artists Hubertus von der Goltz and Frank Michael Zeidler in the former equestrian military hospital of the Garde-Ulanen barracks in Potsdam. The building now houses an exhibition hall and several artists’ studios. With the arrival of a new curator and a renewed focus on contemporary art, the Kunsthaus asked Onck West to develop a fresh visual identity. Our design was inspired by the extraordinary building and the time in which it was created.

Bergamo Film Meeting (BFM) is one of the most established and recognisable fixtures on the Italian festival circuit. For 44 years, every March, it has brought thousands of filmgoers to Bergamo for nine days of screenings, more than 160 films, and a programme that brings together archives, new visions, talks and critical discussion. The festival’s 44th edition moves between two very different cinematic worlds – Abbas Kiarostami and Louis de Funès – reaffirming BFM as a space where eras, languages and ways of seeing cinema continue to coexist.

For the past ten years, I have worked with Studio Suq on the festival’s identity. The brief has always been very clear: cinema must remain at the centre. The project develops on two levels: on the one hand, the image itself; on the other, lettering, conceived as a parallel visual layer made up only of colour and text, capable of extending across all the materials the festival requires.

For the identity of BFM44, I began focusing on what introduced the films: title sequences, posters, lettering, the way typography entered the scene before the narrative. Watching Louis de Funès’ films, what stood out was an extraordinary graphic vitality: heterogeneous typefaces, bright colours, animated lettering, titles conceived as true visual spectacles.

The main spark came from L’aile ou la cuisse (1976). What interested me was the visual energy of its opening sequence: a small choreography of objects, artificial colours, rhythm, theatricality and exuberant typography. The idea was to turn that vocabulary into a visual identity for the festival.

The system is not built around a single fixed mark, but around three different letterings of the BFM acronym, each developed from different title-sequence references. Movement also becomes part of the project.n Holding the system together is a more neutral, a grotesque typeface with a playful personality: Fig Grotesk by TienMin Liao. Its role is to create contrast with the main lettering and give the communication a structure that is clear, contemporary and legible.

There is also a very specific nostalgia embedded in the project for the cinema of the 1960s and 1970s: the saturated colours, so unlike those we are used to today, and the performative dynamism of Louis de Funès. Rather than simply representing the festival, the project attempts to set it in motion: the titles roll, the auditorium darkens, and Bergamo Film Meeting is about to begin.

Man Ray: When Objects Dream at The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the first major exhibition to examine the radical experimentation of American artist Man Ray (1890–1976) through one of his most significant bodies of work, the rayograph. Man Ray coined the term to name his version of the 19th-century technique of making photographs without a camera.

Featuring 160 rayographs, paintings, objects, prints, drawings, films, and photographs, Man Ray: When Objects Dream highlights the principal place of the rayograph—a type of cameraless photograph—within the context of many of the artist’s most important works. This exhibition includes thirty-five works by Man Ray which are part of the major promised gift of nearly 200.

Visual identity for the second season of La Trinité, the result of a collaboration between Le Concert de l’Hostel Dieu and Superspectives, brought together within the Lyon Trinité Musique association. Together, they inaugurate a new stage dedicated to baroque and irregular music, set within the historic setting of the Chapelle de la Trinité in the heart of Lyon.

This season, nature emerges as a guiding thread. A sensitive presence—by turns flamboyant, silent, untamed, or amorous—a living material that resonates throughout the chapel over the course of the year.

The palette, reduced and saturated, deliberately breaks away from the traditional codes of baroque music, asserting the bold momentum of this first season under a new artistic direction.

The arch, the central motif of the new visual identity, unfolds through its various applications. It embodies La Trinité’s ambition to create a dialogue between early repertoire and contemporary creation.

The team comprised Alain Papazian (art direction & graphic design), Anthony Couret (web), and William Sundfor (photography). The fonts used are EK Roumald with EK Roumald Mono (Erkin Karamemet), AC Modern Gothic (AllCaps), Mercure (Abyme), and Ready Active (Plain Form). Imprimerie Chirat provided the printing.

The visual identity for Staatsballett Berlin, designed by Eps51, combines expressive typography with a restrained contemporary layout system. As one of Germany’s leading ballet companies, Staatsballett Berlin plays a central role in the development and preservation of ballet, both locally and internationally.

The identity translates the grace, energy, and emotional intensity of dance into a graphic language that balances movement and structure. The typographic palette pairs Similar with NT Zeu, whose proportions and rhythm complement the geometric character of Similar while introducing a contrasting voice across editorial materials, posters, and digital applications.

Developed in close collaboration with the team at Staatsballett Berlin, the system reflects both the tradition of classical ballet and the company’s contemporary cultural presence in Berlin.

Pentagram partners Michael Gericke and Michael Bierut collaborated on a new visual identity for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, one of the most beloved and visited museums in the US. Its goal is to “reflect the vibrancy of the institution and its diverse collections, programming and audiences.”

The new wordmark was tailored from a bespoke version of Empirica by Frere-Jones Type. It has “stature but is friendly and welcoming, conveyed in the deliberate shift to upper and lowercase type,” says Pentagram.

The National Gallery of Art (NGA) is a world-renowned art museum on the National Mall, founded by Andrew Mellon in 1937, offering a vast collection from the Middle Ages to today, including European and American masterpieces, sculpture, and modern art, with free admission and two distinct buildings (West for classics, East for modern) plus a Sculpture Garden, welcoming millions annually to explore art freely.

Visual identity for the exhibition Inezita Barroso: 100 anos de viola e pioneirismo for Sesc Mogi das Cruzes.

The show about Inezita Barroso (1925–2015) and “100 Years of Viola and Pioneering” is presented by Sesc Mogi das Cruzes to mark the artist’s centennial and bring together fifteen activities in her honor. The concept is anchored in enraizamento (“rootedness”), inspired by a statement Inezita made to Revista Brasil: “Something without roots flies away; the wind takes it and it disappears.” In her performances, Inezita was often seen wearing floral dresses, full skirts, and scarves, elements associated with traditional attire from Brazil’s countryside. The visual identity draws on this symbolic dimension by placing vernacular rural prints and folk embroidery at the center of the graphic system. The full booklet is available for download.

For the Cursa dels Nassos 2025 campaign, ESIETE developed a visual system and communication assets built around Nassos Display, a custom typeface designed by ESIETE for the race. The letterforms act as modular building blocks: cropped, repeated, and recomposed into energetic shapes that amplify rhythm, speed, and impact across formats and touchpoints.

Nassos Display was selected for the ADG Laus Awards 2025 (In Book, Creative/Experimental)

The third edition of NPATAK’s International Architecture Festival took place in Yerevan from September 9 to 14, 2025.

From Büro Uebele:

From the relatively minor task of designing a poster for an architecture conference there evolved – without the slightest effort on our part – a surprisingly attractive and effective visual identity. Which we make no bones at all about claiming as our own work. Because our Armenian clients adopted elements of our poster (the colourful stripes, the specific typesetting mode), rearranging them for different applications and using them with background images.

The striking Balkenschrift font created by typeface designer Gabriel Richter in collaboration with Andreas Uebele looks like it was drawn with a ruler – making it a good match for the architectural theme. because every product, whether it’s a building or a brand, needs to tell a story and be structurally sound. Only then can you really work with it.

The Schomburg Center is one of the world’s leading cultural institutions devoted to the preservation and study of materials focused on African American, African Diasporic, and African experiences. Its wide-ranging collections illuminate the richness of global Black history, arts, and culture, and continue the tradition of its namesake.

Featuring the Community Gothic typeface by Frere-Jones Type, the design was created by Brooklyn-based Morcos Key, who collaborated with the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture on the celebratory announcement of its centennial. To mark the occasion, a special limited-edition library card was produced featuring artwork by Houston Conwill for the Schomburg’s 100th anniversary.

The Schomburg Center logo is in Mike Abbink’s FF Kievit and the call to action in FF Kievit Slab.