05.03.2026
We are thrilled that the poster for “Sommer in Stuttgart 2025” has been selected as one of 100 Beste Plakate D/A/CH 2025 🎉
Visual identity based on the question of what a city is without its people and whether a city might just exist because of its inhabitants.
Walter Ruttmann’s experimental documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis from 1927 shows the empty streets of Berlin in the morning slowly filling up with people. These obscure images serve as the conceptual starting point for the identity of DIE IRRITIERTE STADT, a festival that presented dance, theater, music, film, and literature performances in public spaces.
Like the streets in the documentary, various media that is used to promote the festival is filled in several phases with all kinds of different content. The first announcements initially lack any information about the festival itself – only a neon orange printed surface is presented.
In a second step, the previously blank posters are overprinted with the festival’s key information, the titles of the performances, and small images that interact in a rhythmic dialogue.
Like the empty posters in public space, the website also causes irritation: from time to time, small chunks of text appear, making it difficult to read the content that is displayed in different positions each time the page is reloaded or switched.
Texts and images in the program booklet were placed in the bleed and then continued on the following pages. The consecutive content was interrupted by various text sections.
In addition to the program booklet, a foldable festival agenda, which is in the style of a map, guides the audience through the city to the individual performances.
Starting from the initial question of what a city is without its people, the Festival Identity conversely poses the question of what design is without content and therefore contributes to the festival’s artistic discourse.
