aMuz Chamber Music Forum – Designing for chamber music

What do you do when you have to design a logo and new brand identity for chamber music? You can go with the most obvious and play with musical notation. Except thatʼs precisely what our client was running from.  And we were so glad to help.

2021

About

AMuz Chamber Music Forum is a platform for the Chamber Music Department of Stanisław Moniuszko Academy of Music in Gdańsk. Among the many music initiatives they organize are the two most prominent international chamber music events: the International Johannes Brams Chamber Music Competition (ICMC) and the International Piano Duo Festival (IPDF).

How to illustrate music and avoid banalities

When our client came to us, they needed a couple of things:

They wanted a consistent visual identity that would span all of their initiatives, including the music events, which lacked unified branding and were scattered all over the place in terms of graphic design.
They wanted to avoid cliches and a very literal depiction of music present in their previous designs, adding some sophistication that chamber music is well worth.

What they were really after was a modern, easily recognizable look that would wow not only their students but the entire music world, drawing attention to their initiatives with eye-catching design.

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Focus on letters instead of notes and clefs

Trying to escape from the triviality and predictability of all the usual musical symbols, we decided to really hone in on the typography, making it the most prominent feature of the branding. We wanted the whole thing to be subtle but not boring or too cliche, so we wouldn’t fall into the trap of arriving at something we wanted to move away from. So we went for solutions that let us keep the creativity, irregularity, and elegance using letters in a fresh, modern way.

A new level of finesse

Focusing on the typography gave us a whole array of possibilities which we also adapted for the illustrations we created for the website. We designed a logo system including the main logo and two separate logos for the two events. All based on the same concept with intriguing, two-element, sans-serif typeface and simple yet effective tricks like ligatures.

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Along with that we created a new, responsive website compliant with all current accessibility standards. It includes illustrations and animations that correspond with the letter silhouettes while also showing what goes on a chamber music stage in a very symbolic way. At the same time the website is also full of Easter eggs, like subtle animations or color transitions we really enjoyed designing.