Yosh Schreiner and Tim Lindacher create a “humorous, almost naive” identity for an electronic music festival in a castle

Sometimes the strongest visual identities are borne from juxtaposition. The contrast of a theme or venue with a visual style provides a pleasing surprise, some irony even. That’s certainly the case with Yosh Schreiner and Tim Lindacher’s identity for Bau Mich Auf, an electronic music festival held on the grounds of a grand building. Both Yosh and Tim are currently studying for a BA and MA respectively, and also operate freelance design practices on the side. But it’s their work at Live From Earth, an artist collective based in Berlin, that led them to be collaborating on Bau Mich Auf’s identity.

Initially, the pair took inspiration from the location of the festival; “a construction site on the grounds of an old castle that is currently being renovated,” which is “surrounded by a lot of greenery,” Yosh tells us. With such an extraordinary location, “the aim was also to be a bit out of the ordinary in terms of design,” he continues. Then, they turned to the festival’s name, which Yosh explains is “to be understood as a humorous cry for help from the collapsing castle building, which will then be brought back to life as a festival site.” Taking this name literally, the pair looked for ways to incorporate the concept of renovation or restoration into the identity and explored graphic interpretations of scaffolding even though “they seemed very technical and rigid.” At a certain point, they landed on the idea of giving each artist a personal representation within the visuals, “so Yosh started to build unique blocks for every artist,” Tim says. This linked back nicely to the idea of construction and “designing with the variable modular system felt playful from that point on,” he says.

The result is totally unique and wholeheartedly unexpected. Feeling almost as if the pair have designed logotypes for every artist involved, the identity is contemporary and at odds with the building it is installed within. Yosh describes its visual language as “a humorous, almost naive realisation that turned into a shaky affair,” and we couldn’t put it better ourselves. At its core, the identity is fun, youthful and stylish, embodying the spirit of electronic music in turn.

Typographically, the pair made use of Dinamo’s Gravity, describing how the font “fits like a glove” due to being variable but also particularly apt for the multimedia design of a visual identity, without becoming boring or repetitive. “It also contains a tonne of alternative glyphs and a feature that allows some of the letters to bounce off the baseline or hang from the top,” Yosh details. “This opened up more even possibilities in the design of the building blocks. Many thanks again at this point to the Dinamos! We love you!”

The posters for the festival are a key aspect of the identity and are where we really get to see the system the designers created in action. In one, the blocks stack precariously on top of each other from the bottom of the frame to the top. On the other, they coalesce on the baseline, as if that same tower has collapsed. While indicative of the identity’s concept, these designs also pay tribute to some of the references Yosh and Tim unearthed. “Yosh’s first tower designs reminded me of a poster by Götz Gramlich, which felt quite familiar,” Tim says. “It’s filled with empty chat bubbles, which are seen being dropped into the format. The simplicity of this design was a big inspiration.” Then there was “Armin Hoffmann’s poster for the Herman Miller Collection, which works in a similar way,” Yosh adds.

The posters proved to be particularly popular with the festival-goers, Tim explains: “Such a clear and at the same time playful design seems to be rather rare in the field of festival posters.” The fact the pair have created such a successful visual output is made all the more impressive when you find out that the whole thing came together in a matter of weeks. “There was so little time that we still had to replace, remove or add new artists until the very last day. In fact, this happened even after the physical poster was already in print (lol).” Our palms are sweating just at the thought!