Pràctica’s identity for design festival Blanc references children’s construction games

Barcelona and New York-based design studio Pràctica have reimagined the visual brand identity for Blanc!, an annual design festival held in Barcelona. Teaming up with motion designer Gimmewings and web developer Iago Barreiro, Pràctica have given Blanc! a core and distinct brand for the first time since the festival’s revamp in 2019. “Before that, the design festival didn’t have a core brand, but instead relied on an identity designed, each year, by a different local design studio,” says Javier Arizu of Pràctica. Bold colours, changing shapes, and colourful innovative colour-matching now leads the way in Blanc!’s upcoming festival. The new brand identity jumps out the screen with life and dynamism, inspired by children’s construction games. “To maintain the changing nature of the festival, the new identity had to be solid yet flexible enough to retain certain uniqueness in each edition, without losing sight of the global identity,” Javier explains.

The choice to use children’s construction games as a source of inspiration aligns with Blanc!’s overall didactic goals within design and art. “Blanc! is a festival focused on design, creativity and innovation that promotes culture in a fun and festive way,” Javier says. “Children’s games, due to their didactic component, have a very similar take – they are all about learning and having fun in doing it”. In this space of endless play that children’s games evokes, Javier and Pràctica saw a myriad of potential for a new brand identity. “It gave us the opportunity to generate a wide range of assets from very simple pieces,” he explains. “The combination of the festivity that characterises this festival, with the rigorous knowledge you can acquire there, was the answer to the visual identity.”

The playful and ever-changing nature of the festival itself also inspired Pràctica’s identity. This particular year, they faced a new set of challenges, which ended fuelling creativity. Due to Covid-19, the project shifted 100 per cent to digital and streaming,” Javier tells us. “This made us learn a lot, especially regarding all On Air pieces that surround this type of projects”. As the project was entirely digital in nature, Pràctica have crafted a visual language that enhances in motion – something very befitting to Blanc! going forward. “We wanted to apply Blanc!’s tone of festivity into the neutral/rigorous identity structure without losing the global identity,” Javier adds.

On the redesign, the festival’s name serves as the main protagonist. “The Blanc! characters are made out of several modules that interact with the festival content, creating a flexible typographic language,” Javier says. “Through the chromatic and typographic diversity, we tackled the festival's joyful spirit”. As for what’s next in Pràctica’s impressive body of work, Javier teases a new collaboration with NYC-based architecture studio MA-MA and a project with actor Seth Rogen on his new cannabis brand Houseplant. With Blanc!’s new visual identity now a distinctive and expressive whimsical journey, we can’t wait to see what Pràctica have in store for the world of cannabis consumption.