Benvinguda Màgia, Barcelona Christmas campaign 2019

ToY and Trio Grotesk in use for the Christmas campaign 2019 of Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona city council):

This year’s Christmas campaign offers a modern take on the greetings cards which used to be sent by different professionals in the city and were distributed among people for the festive season. The professions now take on magical properties, with fantasy characters symbolising the traditions, values and magic of Christmas.

The characters include the Tió trainer, the welcomer, the food taster, the grape peeler, the gift wrapper, the non-sexist toy inventor and the Three Kings. This clutch of seasonal characters are the work of the illustrator Olga Capdevila, with the collaboration of the designer Pol Solsona, and is based on the poetry, fables, tales and stories of the writer Irene Solà.

As Pol Solsona Studio explain:

We seized the opportunity to have the whole city as our playground, so we created a multi-format narrative project so the citizens would slowly discover piece by piece, and by that way, they would come across 10 fictional magic Xmas characters we created through collectable greeting cards, poems, merchandising, outdoor campaign, activities and city shows. “Welcome Magic” is a tribute to traditions, to the unknown, to invisible professions, collectables and literature… Revealing some mysteries, in order to generate new ones.
Despite that children are the main target, the campaign winks the older generations by remembering Christmas cards with reinterpretations of old characters like the “night watchman”.

Concept campaign and narrative: Olga Capdevila
Project development & Ping Pong players: Pol Solsona Studio & Olga Capdevila
Characters script & poems: Irene Solà