Leeds International Festival of Ideas 22
Rabbithole• Date added
31 January 2023
• Date added
31 January 2023
Leeds International Festival of Ideas (LIFI) is an annual celebration of new ideas and innovation. Held over four days in September 2022, the festival invited the world's leading thinkers to compelling talks and panel discussions covering topics such as climate activism, food culture, mental health, and the metaverse.
Leeds and Glasgow-based creative studio Rabbithole was responsible for changing up and evolving the festival identity annually.
Client
Leeds International Festival of Ideas
Year
2022
Creative Director
Tim Dee
Brand Strategist
Mark Martin
Graphic Designer
Danielle Harrison
Leeds International Festival of Ideas (LIFI) is an annual celebration of new ideas and innovation. Held over four days in September 2022, the festival invited the world's leading thinkers to compelling talks and panel discussions covering topics such as climate activism, food culture, mental health, and the metaverse.
Leeds and Glasgow-based creative studio Rabbithole was responsible for changing up and evolving the festival identity annually.
While there are some constants such as the use of the colour pink and bold type, each year's identity has a distinct character and aesthetic. In 2021, the identity design was academic, scientific, and high-brow, resembling matter grown in a laboratory.
For 2022, the studio wanted to experiment with something more naive and playful, resulting in an identity that was more accessible and appealing to families and casual festival attendees. The identity had been affectionately described as "weird multi-coloured balloon monsters”.
In 2020, Rabbithole began collaborating with Frankfurt-based digital artist Joseph Töreki. His exceptional 3D skills allowed the studio to be more ambitious and experimental in their approach. The collaboration with Joseph was successful due to shared values and processes focused on curiosity, play, and exploration. Rabbithole would send Joseph a loose concept, such as 'the early amorphous stages of an idea', and then work together to explore and develop the concept through email exchanges containing abstract sketches and animations.
The resulting soft and tactile work from the collaboration in 2022 was a mix of diverse ideas and opinions, and was described as being both beautiful and ugly, chaotic and bizarre.
“It can be difficult to sign off on pasting giant, obscure, abstract shapes all over the host city, but the client's openness to new, strange, and experimental ideas, in line with the festival's core ethos, had paid off.”
The LIFI identity has a significant presence in Leeds in the lead-up to the event, having been advertised on billboards, lamppost banners, and poster drums across the city. The omnipresence of the brand on Rabbithole’s home turf made it a fun project to work on because it will be seen by many and displayed in enormous formats. For this reason, the studio aimed to create something striking and intriguing that was able to command attention and stop people in their tracks.
LIFI was a project where there was almost unconditional trust from the client. This trust, built up and earned over many years, enabled bravery in the design process. It can be difficult to sign off on pasting giant, obscure, abstract shapes all over the host city, but the client's openness to new, strange, and experimental ideas, in line with the festival's core ethos, had paid off.
The collective creativity had significantly impacted the festival's direction, esteem, and success over the past five years. In 2022, most events sold out for the first time, and city-centre-dwelling locals said that the festival's colourful and vibrant visibility boosted their civic pride.
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