Panama Plus Festival Branding, Visual Identity

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Panama Plus Festival 2017
Branding, Communication Design

In an ongoing partnership, the team of Panama Plus festival asked us to design their complete visual appearance, animated teasers and digital presence. Panama Plus is an interdisciplinary music and arts festival, which constantly tries to build bridges between cultures and societies. As the festival tries to push boundaries and broaden your point-of-view, we thought about how we could incorporate that concept into a visual system. So the branding is based on a visual analogy to claim undefined territory. Maps often use hatching to mark a certain area – we took that as a key-element and started to play with it, until we reached a state in which the pattern would use strict geometric forms and even create optical illusions. Optical illusion is an interesting analogy to the festival: You create something, that – as a fact – is not there, but still you are able to perceive it and therefore might think about what you think is real or what might not be.

To accompany the design identity, we designed a new font, which we later named MD Maya. The festival tries to create a utopian world in which it's visitors head for an alternative experience and (hopefully) forget in which reality they are currently in. We wanted to create a font, that could embody this mentality and remember of a hidden civilization. The symbols of the typography somehow form signs but could also be the silhouette of a building, a mark in a cave. The font was used for the complete visual identity of the festival, which included flyers, banners, posters or advertisements. The font can be downloaded for free here and used for personal and commercial projects.

We did not only develop the visual identity of the music festival, but also participated in various social projects. So for instance e helped design a magazine written and made by refugees, which later was sold at the festival. The money gathered by the whole thing went back to helping those in need. Further we helped produce a exhibition lookbook in cooperation with the German photography magazine Der Greif. Besides the branding and communication design, we developed various animated clips and festival teasers, some in cooperation with a local theater-group. The videos were used for different mediums, such as social media, subway-infomercials and so on.

Credits

Creative Direction: Maximilian Heitsch

Design: Gabriela Baka, Maximilian Heitsch, Marco Kawan, Sebastian Haiss

Animation: Korbinian Lenzer