Visual Identity: Montreal Jazz Festival Concept

A bold visual identity concept for Montreal Jazz Festival pairs generative TouchDesigner trumpet forms with agile jazz typography.

Designing for an institution like the Montreal Jazz Festival means grappling with decades of visual heritage. I've always loved digging through classic festival archives. When you sift through fifty years of festival posters, the visual languages shift wildly from era to era. Yet one instinct stays unbroken: raw, expressive color. That historical continuity sparked this self-initiated project. The goal wasn't to wipe the slate clean, but to channel that historic warmth into a responsive, modular system built for contemporary stages and digital channels.

Generative Visual Identity and Jazz Improvisation

Typography carries the heartbeat of the identity. A tall, condensed display face tilts at an aggressive angle. Its elongated vertical stems mimic guitar strings pulled taut across a wooden fretboard. For dense lineup schedules and stage times, a calm grotesque keeps functional information legible. But the real spark comes from loose, hand-drawn lettering. These gestural letterforms twist across the layout like an improvised trumpet solo. They scale up, duck behind photography, and break out of the margins. Structured information and loose expressive riffs play off each other continuously.

To translate live acoustics into graphics, the system relies on node-based networks in TouchDesigner. Sound waves expand through concentric rings that echo the brass bell of a trumpet. This procedural pattern ripples across large outdoor building banners, staff credentials, transit posters, and canvas deck chairs. Because the graphic engine generates infinite variations, no two festival touchpoints ever look identical. It captures the very essence of live jazz: disciplined structure giving way to spontaneous joy.

Physical collateral brings this energetic language down to earth. Printed guides use tactile folds that tuck easily into festival pockets. Silk-screened enamel keychains turn the trumpet motif into an enduring keepsake, while woven wristbands separate zones through punchy color contrast. Everything feels unified without turning repetitive. It honors the soul of live music while giving the Montreal Jazz Festival an agile toolkit for the future.

Explore more about the festival on Montreal Jazz Festival.