lesen.hören
2024
Redesign Visual identity
lesen.hören is the literature festival in Mannheim and has been held annually at Alte Feuerwache since 2007. For three weeks, the festival presents high-ranking contemporary German-language literature by renowned authors as well as young, little-known writers.
The events are moderated by leading literary critics from the German feature pages and put new literature from the German-speaking world in the spotlight of current discussions.
From 2007 to 2015, Roger Willemsen was the patron and a moderator for the Mannheim Literature Festival. From 2013, Willemsen also acted as program director and presented “more themed evenings, stage talks and dialogues with other art forms such as photography and music”. Insa Wilke has been the program director since 2016. In 2009, a festival for children’s and youth literature was also launched in collaboration with the Mannheim City Library.
At the end of 2024, I was asked whether I would like to redesign the existing appearance of lesen.hören. Since a complete redesign of the festival design was not possible, I tried to get an overview of the existing design elements, evaluate possibilities, analyze problem areas and develop appropriate solutions. A redesign is always a bit of a tightrope walk. Thank you for your trust!
The basic requirements were to create recognizability and stringency for all festival media, to develop clarity within the brand communication and at the information level and to find a coherent approach to the associated festival for children’s and young adult literature.
I decided to use selected festival colors and worked on a simple but clear hierarchy of information.
A stringent use of logo, type, color and graphic elements runs through all festival media: event and festival posters, program booklets, ads, social media content, flyers and monitor graphics.
Nuri, the mascot of the lesen.hören children’s festival is by the way from Constanze von Kitzing and has always delighted me during the design 😉
