Elevating a City Through Art
Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art
Purpose
- Building brands
- Shaping places
- Creating journeys
What we did
- Brand strategy
- Brand architecture
- Naming
- Visual identity
- Verbal identity
- Experience
- Wayfinding
- Digital
- Campaign
The Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) was conceived to help culturally re-position Latvia’s capital and distance it from its preconception as the go-to stag destination. Through contemporary art we engage a national and international audience with its rich culture and unique history and open its city gates to a bright future. The biannual editions are experiences curated to surprise, challenge, provoke and invite visitors to question the historical heritage, fast changing geopolitics and contemporary reality of Latvia.
The certainty of change
Change is a constant and imperceptible process. Nothing remains the same yet it often feels as if things are fixed, solid certainties. Like all Baltic states, Riga became the focus of political and economic restructuring. The brand identity responds to the historical and political change, its period of radical transformation and the social reorganisation of the country.
Whilst the identity appears to be rigid, consisting of purposefully positioned letters confined to a grid, these letters rearrange from application to application, giving the brand an unexpected fluidity and elasticity, whilst remaining instantly recognisable. With venues peppered throughout the city, the shuffled letters equally represent the way visitors explore the biennial - inviting them to discover corners of the city they may have otherwise missed.
Triangle, circle, square
Finding your way around a biennial can be challenging; Which artist? Which artwork? Which building? The inaugural edition of the biennial, RIBOCA1, unfolds over eight venues spread across the city. Each location is different, with different rules and spaces. Over 100 artists, over 120 artworks and all this in three languages (Latvian, Russian and English).
To help encapsulate this, we have devised a simple system that brings together all information, interpretation and navigation. The system uses three symbols - making it easy for visitors to distinguish between location, artist and artwork. Location is represented by the most solid structure, a triangle. Print is represented by an open book, a square. Digital is represented by a global perspective, a circle.
