Fleet Collective's factory-inspired identity for Dundee Design Festival is open source for you to play with

The event, which takes place at the end of May, will be housed in the vast former home of the DC Thomson printers (the folks behind the Beano, Dandy and many more for the uninitiated.) As is befitting of these industrial surroundings, the design team looked to the idea of “factory floor” for the theme of the identity.

Fleet Collective designer Lyall Bruce explains that the team wanted to use a colour palette that was “representative of this environment,” and looked to the yellows, reds and blues of industrial machinery, signage and workwear. “We focused the palette on predominantly blue and yellow with an occasional use of red in some print work,” he explains.

The designs also draw on those for the inaugural Dundee Design Festival in 2016, also created by Fleet Collective. “We looked at how we could evolve this, particularly looking at the pattern that was designed, the idea of using that as the building blocks to construct this years felt like the right direction,” says Bruce. “This approach led to an interesting experiment in typography, looking at how we could build a logo mark that represented this years festival using the fewest shapes possible and still remain legible.”

The 2017 numerals are used in different configurations across the branding’s various applications, including posters, brochures, and a short animation. “Playing with this visual language is something we’re keen to integrate further into the festival this year, and we’ve made all the design elements available to download to see how people might include them in their work or even just experiment with other ideas,” Bruce adds.