ASIA PACIFIC – October 17, 2013 – Global brand consultancy, FutureBrand presents the new brand created for Melbourne Festival, one of Australia’s flagship international arts festivals and among the major multi-arts festivals of the world in terms of quality of work, innovation of vision, and scale and breadth of program.
As the brand partner for Melbourne Festival’s brand strategy, identity and the 2013 festival campaign, FutureBrand collaborated for six months with Melbourne Festival to co-create a strong and consistent overarching brand that could build enduring equity and deliver on the ambitions that the festival has for its future, FutureBrand said in a press release.
The new brand was based on the need to broaden the festival’s appeal in the cluttered and competitive event space of Australia’s arts capital.
FutureBrand described the brand mark, which is inspired by the unique 20-degree angle of the Melbourne city grid.
With the Hoddle rectangle as the focal point, it represents a bold stamp and a window to the exchange of ideas and culture, inspiring and sparking connections. Specifically, it is colored with the festival’s historical purple, finished with cut-out texts in sans serif block capitals and the word “Festival” intentionally printed upside-down.
Commenting on the new brandmark, FutureBrand Australia’s Managing Director, Sally McNeill, said, “The logo helps identify the Melbourne Festival as brave, iconic, dynamic and vibrant. The (Hoddle) angle says ‘Melbourne’ when you understand the idea of the map, the Hoddle Grid, and how the festival will build around that… It represents the fact that there is always going to be something a little different, something unexpected – it’s an element of surprise.”

According to FutureBrand, the beauty of the brandmark also lies in that it allows constantly varied, expressive and colourful campaigns to be layered on top. "Created with the intention for the brand to have the freedom and flexibility to adapt and come to life every year in different ways, the brandmark evolves in this year’s campaign look," FutureBrand said.
As seen at the Melbourne Festival program launch event and promotional materials that are now placed throughout the city, the brandmark is used in black and white versions to fit the theme of the 2013 festival campaign that takes visual references to the promise of “connections” and places Melbourne Festival at the heart of the arts.
