Pentagram’s Domenic Lippa creates freehand identity for London Design Festival

Lippa has updated the identity for the festival for each of the previous four years. He says, ’Our challenge every year is create an identity within an identity. Every single piece of work has to support the LDF logo [created by Frost Design], but also be a strong piece of work on its own.’

This year’s identity, which Lippa started to work up in November 2009, uses a freehand typeface, created by Pentagram designer Beatrice Blumenthal, and a numerical approach, with a series of statistics highlighted. Lippa says the freehand approach is ’a slight reaction to the cleanliness of last year’s typographic design’. Last year the festival used a ’Be bold’ strapline.

LDF deputy director Will Knight says, ’We’ve always had quite a typographic approach, previously, and we felt it was time for a different, more approachable style – it’s a bit more street [now].’ He adds that the style reflects the number of different disciplines the festival covers, and alludes to the growth of crafts disciplines and student projects.

Lippa says he will work over the coming weeks to create 20-25 pieces of numerical information, which will be used in the LDF collateral. The identity will be used in the run-up to the festival, as well as during the festival itself, which runs from 18-26 September.