Pentagram rebrands De Bijloke, one of Europe’s most vibrant music venues — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Muziekcentrum De Bijloke is one of Europe’s most vibrant music venues, and it has a history like no other. The Ghent music centre’s central performance space sits under an oak roof structure that began life in 1251 as a medieval hospital, and a major restoration and acoustic redesign turned it into the concert hall it is today. Ahead of the launch of its 26/27 season, De Bijloke asked Pentagram’s London office for a digital-first identity that would attract new music-loving visitors while still appealing to its loyal audience.

For years after that restoration, De Bijloke’s communication was about the building. “The project started from a feeling that our identity and the story we were telling about De Bijloke no longer fully reflected who we had become,” explains Lead of Public & Marketing/Communication, Shari Platteeuw. “We were not looking for a new logo in isolation,” she continues. “We wanted to rethink the brand more fundamentally: our positioning, our visual language and the way we speak about De Bijloke. Pentagram helped us translate the tension that is very specific to this place: eight centuries of history, combined with music that only truly exists in the moment it is performed.”

“That eventually became the idea behind the brand: ‘Alive in every moment. Past, present and future,’” Platteeuw adds. Pentagram delivered guidelines with the identity, setting out the principles for its verbal language, in which De Bijloke speaks as a gracious host and a thoughtful curator of its programme.

“In workshops with the clients we got to understand their programme and curatorial approach more deeply,” Pentagram’s Partner Marina Willer tells us. “In our research, we looked at many ways that music can be visualised through movement,” Willer explains, the search taking in her doodles, various dance and music notations, and the way artists trace their body movement. The logo that came out of that research is a swooping, fluid mark, drawn from the unconventional music notation methods of composer John Cage and from experiments with an oscilloscope – an analogue tool that visualises audio signals. “The objective was to move away from the ‘historical’ perceptions people already have of Bijloke’s musical programme,” she continues. “So, we avoided the obvious iconography clichés – musical clefs and classical scores.”

Against the mark’s expressiveness, the typography is modern, clear and confident. Pentagram chose the sans serif Forma DJR for its simplicity, and to convey a democratic, approachable brand aimed at everyone – its plain letterforms giving the identity a neutral balance and still leaving room for creative arrangements in headlines and key messaging. The palette is drawn from features that are constant across the building: the walls, chairs and windows. Each colour taken from them is paired with a vibrant tone that stands for the contemporary eye of the programme and the modernity of the refurbished space, against the historical building around it. The team also created a series of patterns to use as supporting graphics.

De Bijloke asked for Jazz, Family and what it calls New Music – the more experimental strand – to have a presence of their own, connected to the identity. “Three parts of the programme needed to be highlighted,” Willer details, “as current perceptions are that their programme is predominantly classical, which is not the case.” “De Bijloke presents classical music, early music, contemporary classical music, jazz, festivals and projects for younger audiences, so we needed an identity that could create strong recognition without making every programme look identical,” Platteeuw notes.

Each of the three strands has a pattern of its own, separate from the supporting graphics. Jazz and New Music take theirs from the oscilloscope work more directly than the rest of the identity does. Jazz is inspired by the improvisation in the genre, and New Music pushes the mark further than anywhere else. The Family pattern goes its own way, and it is the playful one of the three.

Pentagram also built a generative tool, which reworks the Jazz and New Music patterns. A designer adjusts the drawing of the mark on it, with scales for the intensity and movement of the lines. The output is a run of ever-changing forms, adaptable for motion and exported for any format. Sam Corijn, De Bijloke’s designer, has since been using it in the programme design.

The identity launched in May 2026 with the website, alongside the announcement of the 26/27 season. It now runs across De Bijloke’s main audience touchpoints, and the venue is translating it into the physical experience of the building gradually. “What stands out most is how naturally the new identity has been accepted, also by people who have known De Bijloke for years. Our Friends membership programme has remained very strong since the launch and has even continued to grow,” Platteeuw concludes.