Mirage Machine

Mirage Machine could be classified as some sort of festival, or extended estival amusement for an urban public. It was organized in the summer of 2022 by La Machine du Moulin Rouge, a venue in Paris, France. Apart from innumerable musical acts, Mirage Machine also offered various workshops, lucullan delights, and an open-air cinema, to cite just a few. A program to address all senses.

The site has a long history in the field: originally it housed the heating central for the (in)famous Moulin Rouge cabaret, founded in 1889. In the early 1960s it became La Locomotive, also known by the name “La Loco”, one of France’s most important venues for the rock genre. Among many more, The Who, The Kinks, and David Bowie are on the long list of superstars that played there. In the 1970s and 1980s La Loco reshaped itself to one of the biggest night clubs of Paris with three floors dedicated to different music styles. After a period of financial decline in the first decade of the new millenium and a legal confrontation with tax administration, the place went bankrupt in 2009. Subsequently the Moulin Rouge mothership bought back the venue and reopened it in 2010 with the new name of La Machine du Moulin Rouge.

Today the venue consists of four parts, the fomer heating central “La Chaufferie” that can host 400 party people, “Le Central” with a capacity of up to 1,000, the “Bar à Bulles”, and the rooftop bar “Le Toit”.

The visual communication for Mirage Machine was conceived by Perpignan based Ahora Studio. The design uses illustrations by Gabriel Mafféïs and two typefaces. Koldova by Stéréo Buro, operating from Paris and Nantes, is a reverse-contrast sans that connects the event to the visual identity of La Machine.

The second typeface and main act is Minotaur Beef. Together with Minotaur and Minotaur Sans, it forms the Minotaur collection, designed by Jean-Baptiste Levée and distributed by Production Type. Minotaur Beef follows the common principle of straight lines instead of curves but pushes the concept further to a contemporary display face with pronounced ink traps. Aloha Studio used it in all caps, featuring its wide I with bars and the M and E that look like enlarged lowercase glyphs.