Tanzhaus Basel is a new artist-run house in the city of Basel, dedicated to dance and performing arts in general. Opened during the summer of 2024, it’s aiming to be anchored in the city and mix social and cultural life together.
Knopp+Kiel delivered their identity, formed by a graphic logo (maybe a T mixed with other letters, or a stylized house?) and a proficient use of NaN Jaune Midi Black for the venue’s name and titles on top of a strong pink and red color combo, maybe only for the first season.
All texts are set using PolySans, converging with Jaune in the direction of friendly/quirky sans serifs, which we can only guess is in order to make the art institution look less pretentious and more affordable. However, the rest of the identity principles, grids and such, remains quite tuned-down, simple and serious, to not overdo it in the quirky direction.
On the Tanzhaus website, to accommodate with the very tight line spacing of headings and the recurring umlauts in German, they devised the clever solution of applying a white/transparent outline on the the text, making the umlaut of a line of text appear cut-out in the bottom of the letters of the previous line instead of simply overlaping.
For the opening of the space, Tanzhaus Basel created a self-made mustard showcasing the identity on the packaging.
