Untitled Macao’s brand for Shenzhen Fringe Festival 2023 is a visual party we can’t look away from

Hosted by the Shenzhen Fringe Arts Centre since 2010, the Shenzhen Fringe Festival has become an international art and cultural platform for domestic and foreign artists to exchange ideas. With an objective to blend art and urban life, the festival brings various art forms – such as music, theatre, dance, visual arts and immersive performances – to both traditional and unconventional venues across the city. For its 2023 edition, the festival set its theme as ‘Fringe Marathon’ and tapped global design studio Untitled Macao to create the identity and the visual language. “The theme embodies the spirit of artists persistently pursuing their goals and delivering uninterrupted performances, much like a marathon. And so, the design inspiration stems from the diverse and captivating performances in the event, represented by various forms of ‘sprites,’ symbolising highly creative ideas,” says Creative Director Au Chon Hin. These ‘sprites,’ or mythical supernatural beings, lend the identity its catching beauty. In creating them, Chon Hin suspends all sense of realism and leans fully into a fantastical world. The creatures are eccentric – potted flowers with alien-like blue eyes, globulous forms with tentacles and amoeba-like forms never caught without a smile on their faces. The sprites, and the design system at large, are injected with a vibrant colour palette, awash in intense gradients. Adding to this visual chaos is Untitled Macao’s choice of typefaces.