Fête de la Musique 2015

Since 1982, on Jack Lang’s impulsion, every year on June 21 France is celebrating the Fête de la Musique (also know as Music Day), a special day where the citizens are allowed and urged to play music outside in their neighborhoods or in public spaces and parks. Free concerts are also organized, where musicians play for fun and not for payment. This concept is now celebrated throughout the world.

Every year a poster is produced for the event, ordered by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. Most of the outputs have been widely criticized by the graphic community but the climax was reached in 2013, when the poster was so bad that it originated an open-letter to the Ministry of Culture to claim fair and decent conditions of work for the public call for bids. After that unfortunate event, the CNAP (National Centre for Visual Arts) took care of the commission, in order to improve the graphic quality and give exposure to smaller (but gifted) studios or designers.

In 2015, the CNAP choose Parisian studio Building Paris to design the poster and identity of the festival. The pair built a strong but minimal identity based on a vivid color palette and the three widths of the Kreuz typeface family, designed by Large. On the poster, initial letters are repeated and overlapped, blending their colors, while informations are interlocked where there’s room for. The Kreuz typeface was then used as the event’s signature on other graphic materials.