Studio Marcus Kraft and Bráulio Amado design Zürcher Theater Spektakel’s 2024 campaign

Studio Marcus Kraft has collaborated with renowned illustrator Bráulio Amado on the Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2024 campaign, which uses expressive, photocopied collages with images from the invited international productions.

Zurich-based graphic designer and art director Marcus Kraft was introduced to the festival eight years ago when the team wanted to renew its corporate design and create a new campaign concept. The studio has worked with the festival on yearly campaigns ever since.

The festival – now in its 45th year – has always had an annual campaign, and posters from older editions have become sought-after collector's items. Because of this, Kraft says there is "a certain tradition and a great honour" in being able to create the campaigns.

For this most recent brief, the festival's new artistic director, Matthias von Hartz, wanted to focus on the top-class artistic program in communications. This was exactly in line with the studio's approach, so various proposals were developed in this direction, according to Kraft.

With Zürcher Theater Spektakel being one of Europe's largest festivals for contemporary performing arts, there are many individual requirements to deal with. When Studio Marcus Kraft was commissioned eight years ago to create the brand, the team decided very early to adopt a simple typographic solution for the word mark and typography.

"This has helped us to develop the brand's recognition consistently over the years and, on the other hand, to provide a neutral platform for the most diverse artistic interpretations of the annual campaigns", says Kraft.

For the wordmark and titles, the studio worked with the Devinyl font, which is used in a very large size on posters, accentuating its bold characters. It was chosen for its "high visibility and recognisability," says Kraft. The serif font Lyon was used for the body text to give the whole design "a more sophisticated appearance." Both fonts have been used for seven years now across the Zürcher Theater Spektakel.

He describes the event as "a melting pot for great international art from all over the world", which includes established artists and newcomers, brilliant entertainers, and creatives who use their platform to tell powerful stories and make political statements. Each year, the campaign must aim to reflect this level of diversity while representing the core festival genres of theatre, dance, performance, acrobatics, and music.

The source material for the campaign collages consists of images from the invited productions. Studio Marcus Kraft commissioned renowned Portuguese illustrator Bráulio Amado to create the campaign artworks in one of his many styles.

Kraft has followed Amado's work for a while and believes him to be "one of the most exciting and versatile illustrators in the world". He says: "Working with him was a real pleasure, and the rough-looking illustrations are reminiscent of quickly produced flyers, as we know them from the protest or punk movement, for example."

"This fits in very well with a politically engaged festival programme."

In past years, the studio has realised the same concept with other artists, such as Jean-Vincent Simonet in 2021, who worked on the existing images in a completely different, more photographic style.

The festival's logo and other typography always appear in black and white, creating "a 'neutral' stage for the artwork", says Kraft, while this year's collages are coloured in blue. This colour choice was made with the illustrator, as "blue tones traditionally always look very nice in offset printing", Kraft explains.