Uncommon’s mouldy identity for Offf Barcelona is grown from biological traces of creatives

What’s more cultural than mould? Offf Barcelona has recently partnered with Uncommon Creative Studio to create the campaign for the 2026 festival, bringing together some of design’s most influential platforms. The campaign, Cultured, sees creativity as a living system – a culture that isn’t shaped by institutions or trends, but by the natural formations and communities of people who are a part of it. One could say, the people who mould the mould!

The campaign, which includes a bespoke design system, typeface and motion design, was built on a magic trick. Uncommon invited members of the creative community into its London and New York studios to share ideas at mixer events. What these artists didn’t realise was that Uncommon were playing the role of mad scientists as their biological traces from shared surfaces, such as imprints, fibers and fragments of presence were secretly collected. These traces were then turned into mould by artist Dasha Plesen, also known as ‘the Mould Queen’. This kaleidoscopic mould became basis for the forms, textures and patterns of the campaign’s visual ecosystem, resulting in an identity and motion language that takes the microscopic and magnifies it.

Combined with a colour approach drawn from nature’s most expansive palette, filled with leaf-spots, powdery mildews, constellations of rusts and blights, the mould is unpredictable and oddly beautiful. The quiet logic and bold textural imagery built within this design system includes Modernisme, Uncommon’s biologically-thriving typeface, inspired by experimental, biomorphic letterforms. As well as that, there’s Hyphae, which is defined by the organic movement and asymmetrical balance typically found in fungal networks, each designed by Ryan Bugden.

“For Offf, the community has always been the core,” says Pep Salazar, director of Off Barcelona. “This collaboration with Uncommon makes that idea tangible. The campaign doesn’t just speak to designers – it is literally built from them. It’s a celebration of shared authorship and the power of gathering, exchanging, and making together.”

“We always go hunting for what we shouldn’t do, and the idea of a magic trick where people didn’t know it but unwittingly played a part in making the very identity that celebrated them was irresistible,” says Nils Leonard, creative founder of Uncommon. “Once we realised that the mould could actually be very beautiful, we knew this was the idea we had to make. The idea that a culture is what we make it was the perfect thread for the idea.”