The Brand Identity featuring Smeerboel: “Its branding is as lively and electric as the event itself.”

Thanks The Brand Identity for featuring our identity for the Dutch festival Smeerboel. Check out our vibrantly ‘smeared’ identity concept, which captures the festival’s dynamic spirit, and read more about the bespoke ‘Smeer Tool’ we created: read the original full article.

The Dutch have brought many excellent things into the world – stroopwafels, Max Verstappen, gouda, you name it. But there’s one thing The Netherlands are particularly great at, and that’s music. Boasting sets from some of Europe’s best techno, house, disco, 90’s and 00’s artists and DJs, Smeerboel is a music festival in Utrecht with branding as lively and electric and the event itself. Designed by Amsterdam-based branding studio Lava, the identity introduces the ‘Smeer Tool’ – created as an interactive, web-based 3D tool for the festival.

“In the first meeting with the festival team,” says Head of Design Sacha van den Haak, “we immediately recognised that the festival has a very clear proposition – creating cool and fun stuff. In the after movies of previous editions we watched visitors actively participating in the festival program. We knew right away that the creative concept should be straightforward and interactive. So, what if we take the festival’s name literally and get ‘smearing’?”

The tool’s gestural and expressive nature is balanced through typography, notably Futura Condensed Extra Bold. “It was the only one font we could find that survived the smearing and still convey a ‘happy-go-lucky vibe’,” van den Haak reveals. Meanwhile, the team added luminous shades of yellow, red, purple, grey, and green to the colour palette to avoid a childlike aesthetic. The identity can evolve in future years too, with potential for new colour palettes and technological advancements, such as AR filters and physical interactions at the festival.

(c) Article by The Brand Identity.