Custom Lettering for Melbourne Festival

Three stripes, one festival identity

TypeMates refined a custom word mark for the Melbourne Festival's 2011 temporary identity, working from a rough sketch provided by Dominic Forde and Famous Visual Services. The lettering adopted a three-stripe treatment referencing Brandon Grotesque. An experimental development phase led to a distinctive alternate 'A' being adopted for the Arts strand. A micro variant of the word mark retains the striped character at widths below 2.5 cm, where the full three-pillar visual is no longer carried.

Set in Brandon Grotesque

Insights

The word mark originated from a rough sketch by Famous Visual Services and was refined typographically by TypeMates.
The three-stripe motif referenced Brandon Grotesque, the festival's corporate typeface.
A micro variant was developed for small-scale use below 2.5 cm width, retaining stripe character without the full three-pillar visual structure.