Frinje Festival (2011—2017) was the most groundbreaking performing arts festival in Madrid, organized by the city's public theater Teatro Español, one of the oldest theater in the world, and hosted by Matadero Madrid, the city biggest experimental art venue.
In every edition, they collaborated with a different designer to reshape their visual image and to communicate the values of the festival through numerous mediums and starting from one brand constrain: the yellow color.
Yellow was the festival color since the first edition and another sign of Frinje rebellious attitude. It’s inherited from an old superstition that states yellow brings bad luck to actors and it's due to the death on stage of Moliére, during his final play Le Malade Imaginaire.
Every letter of the word Frinje was chosen from a different typeface character to symbolize the iconoclastic and multidisciplinary personality of the festival. Together, arranged rigorously on a grid, they represented the juxtaposition of the festival heterogeneous proposal and the solidity of its artistic expression.
For the text, to homage the look & feel of a play script, a sharp monospace font was selected, linking tradition and contemporaneity.
In the 2015 edition, they switch the “g” for a “j” to reflect the evolution of the event and the typical Spanish pronunciation of the original word Fringe. A “j” made out of simple shapes, was created to act as a background of the wordmark in a generic piece.
The result is a flexible system guided by an invisible, strict grid, that functionally adapts to each and every one of the city signage formats and conveys the spirit of an ever-evolving performing arts festival.