Bad News, Wiesbaden Biennale

Favorit in use for the identity of the 2018 edition of the Wiesbaden Biennale. The identity is based on the minimal information for an identity: festival name, date and the two short words of the festival theme. The “Bad News” design is not minimalist: there’s black on white and white on black; left-aligned and center-aligned; upright and rotated. Inside the festival newspaper, the design abandons the frugal approach and shifts to tabloid press mode with justified body text, borders and rules and large all-caps headlines using exclamation marks, partially set in italics, reversed and outlined.

From Fons Hickmann:

We are inundated with real news, fake news, and bad news: The world is changing, and not always for the better. Populism has re-entered the mainstream, holding court everywhere from barstool discussions, to parliamentary sessions, to newspaper headlines. In keeping with this phenomenon, the second Wiesbaden Biennale for Performing Arts, which will be held this summer in the Staatstheater Wiesbaden, has chosen »Bad News« as its theme. To announce the occasion, we designed a newspaper that evokes the style of the tabloid press, with large, flashy fonts communicating the highlights of this year’s event. (…) We used striking typography, exclusively in black and white, with plenty of space for speculation and interpretation.