Zürcher Theater Spektakel’s New Campaign by Studio Marcus Kraft Is One of the Most Honest Pieces of Festival Communication You’ll See This Year

The new visual identity for the Zürcher Theater Spektakel, conceived by Zurich-based Studio Marcus Kraft, simply exists with the quiet authority of something that doesn’t need to convince you. Shot on analog film in an industrial setting, with bodies caught mid-lean, mid-breath, and mid-collapse, the campaign doesn’t sell a festival. It offers a mood, an argument, and a physical experience before you’ve bought a single ticket.

This is the 2026 edition of a collaboration that has been running since 2018. Studio Marcus Kraft has shaped the visual communication of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel for nine years now, and each campaign builds on the last without repeating it. This year, photographer Maxime Ballesteros and actress-choreographer Vimala Pons join the equation—bringing a very particular tension to the imagery: fragility meeting industrial resistance, interiority rendered as physical form.

The result is striking. But more than that, it’s precise. And precision, in festival communication, is rarer than you’d think.

Zürcher Theater Spektakel: Campaign with Maxime Ballesteros and Vimala Pons

What Makes the Zürcher Theater Spektakel’s Visual Identity So Different From Other European Festival Campaigns?

Most cultural institution campaigns follow a legible template. A striking portrait, a bold typeface, a color palette that signals “contemporary.” The visual language is safe, competent, and forgettable within 48 hours. The Zürcher Theater Spektakel campaign operates from a fundamentally different premise—one I’d call the Performative Communication Model.

In the Performative Communication Model, the campaign isn’t promotional material about the festival. It is an extension of the festival’s artistic logic. The campaign is another stage. Consequently, the selection of collaborators follows curatorial criteria, not marketing criteria. International artists from the program itself are invited to shape the visual identity. The communication and the content merge.

This distinction matters enormously. It changes what you measure, what you value, and how you evaluate success. You’re no longer asking, “Does this campaign reach enough people?” You’re asking, “Does this campaign deserve to be seen?”

For the 47th edition of the festival, running from August 13 to 30 at the Landiwiese and various city venues in Zurich, that question has a clear answer.

Vimala Pons and the Concept of Physical Translations of Inner States

Vimala Pons is a French actress and choreographer with a practice rooted in the intersection of physical theater and conceptual performance. Her production Honda Romance will be staged at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel this year—and it forms the thematic spine of the entire campaign.

This is not incidental. The creative team designed the relationship between the campaign imagery and the festival program as a direct thematic link, not a loose visual reference. Vimala Pons describes the photographs as “physical translations of inner states”—micro-movements and emotional impulses that remain barely visible on the surface but carry enormous internal weight.

That framing points to a specific literary and intellectual reference: Nathalie Sarraute’s tropisms. Sarraute, the French novelist and key figure of the Nouveau Roman movement, developed the concept of “tropisms” to describe the involuntary, almost imperceptible psychological movements that occur beneath conscious thought. Her writing tried to make those subsurface impulses visible through language.

The campaign does the same thing through photography. A figure leans against a concrete wall. Another braces against something unseen. Another loses balance, or finds it—you can’t quite tell. These are not poses. They’re states. And the industrial environment—metal, concrete, parked vehicles—isn’t background. Its context: an external mechanic pressing against and shaping inner experience.

I find this conceptual framework genuinely rigorous. It’s not dressing up an idea in artistic language to sound sophisticated. The reference to Sarraute’s tropisms actually illuminates something specific about what these images are doing. They’re capturing the moment before emotion becomes legible—and asking you to sit with that ambiguity.

Why Analogue Film Still Carries Conceptual Weight in 2026

Marcus Kraft’s statement about the campaign is worth quoting in full context: “In an age of AI-generated arbitrariness, this year we are focusing on the texture and imperfections of analog film. Maxime Ballesteros’ photography captures an authenticity that cannot be simulated.”

This is a deliberate position, not just an aesthetic preference. Choosing analog film in 2026 is a statement about the nature of images—specifically, about what makes an image trustworthy. Grain, slight exposure inconsistencies, and the physical relationship between light and silver halide crystals: these are the traces of something that actually happened in front of a lens.

AI-generated imagery can approximate any visual style. It can produce textures that look like analog film. But it cannot produce the specific imperfection of a particular roll of film, shot on a particular day, with a particular person standing in a particular industrial space. That specificity is exactly what Ballesteros’ images deliver—and it’s precisely what the Zürcher Theater Spektakel’s program celebrates: live performance, irreproducible moments, and human presence.

The medium reinforces the message. That coherence is a form of integrity.

Maxime Ballesteros: Why This Photographer Was the Right Choice

Maxime Ballesteros is a Paris-based French photographer known for work that sits between documentary observation and staged composition. His images tend toward intimacy—close framing, available or controlled light, a refusal of glamour. He shoots bodies as if they matter, not as if they’re beautiful.

For this campaign, that instinct translates into something specific: the subjects in the photographs feel exposed without feeling exploited. The industrial environment could easily dominate—overwhelm the figures and reduce them to compositional elements. Instead, Ballesteros keeps the bodies as the emotional center, while the industrial surroundings function as a kind of external pressure.

This is an underrated photographic skill: maintaining human scale within hostile environments. It requires compositional restraint and a genuine attentiveness to the person in front of the lens. The resulting images are both formally strong and emotionally present, which is exactly what the conceptual brief demands.

Furthermore, his collaboration with Vimala Pons brings an additional dimension. She isn’t simply a model or a subject. She’s a co-author of the visual language. The choreographic sensibility she brings to the postures and movements creates images that sit at the border between photography and performance documentation, which is precisely where the festival lives as a cultural institution.

Stillness as a Formal Strategy: The Video Component

Alongside the photographs, the campaign includes short video sequences directed by Makoto C. Ôkubo. These sequences show the protagonists in near-motionless compositions—minimal shifts, a tremor, a breath, a barely perceptible weight transfer.

I’d describe this approach as Arrested Kinesis: the strategic use of minimal movement to make the potential for movement more felt than actual movement would. When a body is nearly still, you become acutely aware of everything that might happen next. The video sequences don’t show action. They create anticipation—and that anticipation mirrors the experience of live performance itself, where the tension before a gesture often carries more energy than the gesture.

The sound in the video sequences comes from Honda Romance, provided by Rebeka Warrior. This is another example of the Performative Communication Model at work: the campaign draws from the actual material of the festival program. The sonic world of the performance bleeds into the promotional world of the campaign. The boundaries dissolve in a way that feels intentional, not accidental.

Nine Years of Zürcher Theater Spektakel Visual Identity: What Studio Marcus Kraft Has Built

Studio Marcus Kraft took on the visual communication of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel in 2018. Nine campaigns later, the studio has built something genuinely rare: a recognizable visual identity that changes completely every year without losing coherence.

This is a difficult design problem. Most visual identity systems achieve consistency through repetition—same typeface, same color palette, same compositional grammar. The Zürcher Theater Spektakel identity achieves consistency through something else entirely: a consistent commitment to a specific kind of visual ambition. The campaigns share a register, not a template.

I’d call this “iterative conceptual continuity”—where each edition of the campaign inherits the intellectual framework and artistic seriousness of its predecessors but not their visual solutions. The result is a body of work that reads as a series rather than a collection of unrelated annual updates.

This approach also solves a problem that plagues cultural institution communication: the tension between brand recognition and artistic freshness. By inviting a new collaborator from the festival program each year, Studio Marcus Kraft ensures that the campaign retains genuine artistic risk. There’s no formula to fall back on. Each year requires a new creative solution—and that constraint produces better work.

The Wider Landscape: How This Campaign Fits Into Contemporary Festival Communication

Across Europe, major performing arts festivals compete for attention in an increasingly saturated visual environment. Many invest heavily in digital marketing—targeted social media, algorithmic placement, influencer partnerships. The campaigns often look competent and feel generic.

The festival’s approach inverts the standard logic. Rather than optimizing for reach, it optimizes for quality of attention. A viewer who stops for the analog-film texture and the conceptual precision of these images is a different kind of viewer than someone who pauses for half a second before scrolling. The campaign selects for depth of engagement over breadth of exposure.

This is a long-term brand strategy as much as a short-term marketing tactic. Over nine years, Studio Marcus Kraft has trained a specific audience to expect something from the festival’s visual communication. That expectation is itself a form of loyalty—and loyalty, in the performing arts sector, is considerably more valuable than reach.

The social media team for this campaign is handled by Unwiderstehlich, with web development by Insor and layout by Michel Fries and Thomas Bruggisser. The full production credits reflect the collaborative, multidisciplinary structure that characterizes the studio’s approach.

Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2026: What to Expect From the 47th Edition

The festival opens on August 13 and runs until August 30, 2026, across the Landiwiese and additional venues throughout Zurich. The 47th edition features over 60 international productions spanning theater, dance, music, and performance.

The headline production is Honda Romance by Vimala Pons, which, given its central role in the campaign, arrives with an unusually rich contextual frame. Audiences will encounter the production already having absorbed its visual and sonic language through the campaign. That pre-exposure shapes the experience. It’s one of the more interesting examples of festival marketing functioning as genuine artistic preparation rather than simple promotional noise.

Since its founding in 1980, the Zürcher Theater Spektakel has established itself as one of Europe’s most significant venues for contemporary performing arts. Its lakeside setting at the Landiwiese gives the festival a physical identity that few comparable events can match. The combination of that setting, the program’s international ambition, and the visual communication strategy creates a cultural object that is coherent from its outermost layer—the campaign poster—to its innermost—the live performance on stage.

That coherence is worth paying attention to. It doesn’t happen by accident.

A Prediction: Analogous Texture as a Defining Aesthetic Trend in Cultural Communication

Marcus Kraft’s framing of this campaign as a direct response to AI-generated imagery feels like more than a single creative decision. It feels like a signal of where high-end cultural communication is headed.

As AI-generated visuals become more capable and more prevalent, the cultural value of demonstrable human-material processes will increase. Analog photography, handmade typography, visible craft imperfection—these aren’t nostalgia. They’re markers of authenticity in an environment where authenticity has become impossible to fake without revealing itself as fake. The more convincingly AI can simulate analog texture, the more valuable genuinely analog texture becomes—precisely because it carries a provenance that simulation cannot replicate.

I’d predict that by 2027, analog-process photography will command a significant premium in cultural institution visual communication—not as a retro aesthetic choice, but as a deliberate epistemological statement about the nature of images and the institutions producing them. The Zürcher Theater Spektakel is ahead of that curve.

Why This Campaign Deserves Your Attention

Good design often operates invisibly—it solves problems so cleanly that you never notice the problem existed. The best cultural communication does the opposite. It makes itself visible as a thought, an argument, a position. It asks you to engage with it rather than simply receive it.

The Zürcher Theater Spektakel’s 2026 campaign, realized by Studio Marcus Kraft with Vimala Pons and Maxime Ballesteros, achieves exactly that. Every element—the analogue film choice, the Sarraute reference, the industrial setting, the near-motionless video sequences, the sound drawn from the festival’s own program—connects back to a coherent intellectual and aesthetic position. Nothing is decorative. Everything is argued.

That level of conceptual rigor in festival communication is genuinely rare. It reflects well on Studio Marcus Kraft, on Vimala Pons and Maxime Ballesteros, and on the Zürcher Theater Spektakel’s willingness to treat its visual communication as an artistic practice rather than a logistical necessity.

If you’re anywhere near Zurich between August 13 and 30, this is a festival worth your time. And even if you’re not, this campaign is worth your sustained attention.

FAQ: Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2026 Campaign by Studio Marcus Kraft

Who created the 2026 visual identity for the Zürcher Theater Spektakel?

Studio Marcus Kraft, the Zurich-based design studio, created the concept, art direction, and design. The campaign was realized in collaboration with French photographer Maxime Ballesteros and French actress-choreographer Vimala Pons. The video was directed by Makoto C. Ôkubo, with sound by Rebeka Warrior.

What is the creative concept behind this year’s campaign?

The campaign centers on the idea of bodies caught between inner states and external mechanics. Shot on analog film in an industrial setting, the images translate emotional and psychological states into physical postures and gestures. The concept draws on Nathalie Sarraute’s literary notion of “tropisms”—involuntary, subsurface psychological impulses—as a framework for making the invisible tangible.

Why did the campaign use analog film photography?

The choice of analog film is a deliberate conceptual decision, not a purely aesthetic one. Art director Marcus Kraft framed it as a direct response to AI-generated imagery, emphasizing that analog photography captures an authenticity that cannot be simulated. The grain and imperfections of film carry a material provenance that digital or AI-generated alternatives cannot replicate.

Who is Vimala Pons, and what is Honda Romance?

Vimala Pons is a French actress and choreographer known for her work at the intersection of physical theater and conceptual performance. Honda Romance is her production, which will be staged at the Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2026. The production forms the thematic foundation of the entire campaign—the visual imagery, the video sequences, and the sound design all draw from its artistic world.

Who is Maxime Ballesteros?

Maxime Ballesteros is a Paris-based French photographer known for intimate, formally precise work that avoids glamour in favor of emotional presence. For this campaign, he shot the protagonists in an industrial environment, maintaining human scale and emotional weight against the physical pressure of the surrounding architecture and machinery.

When and where does the Zürcher Theater Spektakel 2026 take place?

The 47th edition of the Zürcher Theater Spektakel runs from August 13 to August 30, 2026, primarily at the Landiwiese in Zurich, with additional productions at various venues across the city. The festival features over 60 international productions across theater, dance, music, and performance.

How long has Studio Marcus Kraft worked with the Zürcher Theater Spektakel?

Studio Marcus Kraft has been responsible for the festival’s visual communication since 2018, making the 2026 edition the ninth consecutive campaign by the studio. Each year, the studio invites a new international creative collaborator from the festival program to shape the visual identity—ensuring artistic freshness within a consistent conceptual framework.

What is the Performative Communication Model mentioned in this article?

The Performative Communication Model is a framework introduced in this article to describe an approach to cultural institution marketing in which the campaign functions as an extension of the institution’s artistic logic rather than as conventional promotional material. In this model, the selection of collaborators follows curatorial criteria, the campaign draws directly from the festival’s program content, and the communication and artistic content become inseparable.

What is “Iterative Conceptual Continuity” as defined in this article?

“Iterative conceptual continuity” refers to a design strategy in which successive editions of a visual identity share an intellectual framework and level of artistic ambition rather than a fixed visual template. Applied to Studio Marcus Kraft’s work for the Zürcher Theater Spektakel, it describes how each campaign reads as part of a coherent series, despite changing its visual language completely each year.

What is “Arrested Kinesis” as described in this article?

“Arrested Kinesis” is a term introduced in this article to describe the strategic use of near-stillness in the campaign’s video sequences. By showing the protagonists in minimal, barely perceptible movement rather than full action, the video creates a heightened sense of anticipation—making the potential for movement more felt than actual movement would achieve. The approach mirrors the tension of live performance itself.

All images © Studio Marcus Kraft. Take a look at WE AND THE COLOR’s Graphic Design and Branding categories for more.

#branding #campaign #design #graphicDesign #StudioMarcusKraft #theater #ZürcherTheaterSpektakel

Hä? Magazine: The 1,000-Page Hardcover That Proves Health Publishing Was Never Supposed to Be This Boring

There’s a 1,000-page hardcover sitting somewhere that shouldn’t exist — not by the logic of modern media, at least. Hä? Magazine ran for 12 years. It covered earwax, genitals, blood, and bones. It was distributed through Swiss pharmacies. And somehow, it became one of the most awarded, most aesthetically radical health publications in recent memory.

That contradiction is exactly the point.

The complete collection of all 52 issues — now bound into a single art-directed hardcover book by studio marcus kraft — isn’t just a publishing milestone. It’s a design artifact that reframes what health communication can look like when the people making it refuse to dumb it down or dress it up in clinical beige.

Hä? Magazine was never trying to be safe. It was trying to be true.

Hä? Magazine, 1000+ pages hardcover book, art directed by studio marcus kraft.

What Exactly Was Hä? Magazine — and Why Does It Matter Now?

Hä? Magazine launched in 2012. It was published and distributed exclusively through Rotpunkt Apotheken pharmacies in Switzerland. That distribution model alone is worth pausing on. This wasn’t a newsstand title competing for casual readers. It arrived in pharmacies — spaces typically associated with sterile design, cautious language, and a fundamental distrust of anything that looks like it belongs in an art gallery.

Yet that’s precisely where it landed.

The magazine targeted readers starting at age 16. Every single issue focused on one topic about the human body. Think: digestion, skin, the nervous system, reproduction, and pain. Subjects that are simultaneously universal and, somehow, persistently avoided in mainstream media. Hä? didn’t avoid them. It leaned all the way in.

The content was always thoroughly researched. The aesthetics were explicitly influenced by punk culture.

That combination — rigorous editorial standards and deliberately confrontational visual language — is what the industry would now call content disruption through form. But the Hä? team was doing it a decade before that phrase became a conference staple.

The Punk-Health Publishing Framework

There’s a specific design and editorial philosophy embedded in the Hä? project that deserves its own name. Call it Punk-Health Publishing: the practice of applying counterculture visual codes to medically accurate, ethically responsible health content aimed at young audiences.

Punk-Health Publishing operates on a specific set of assumptions. First, young readers are not fragile — they can handle direct, unfiltered information about their own bodies. Second, aesthetic discomfort is a legitimate editorial tool. An image that shocks you is an image that stays with you. Third, pharmacies and doctors’ offices are not neutral spaces — their visual vocabulary carries authority, and that authority can be redistributed through design.

Hä? Magazine built its entire identity on these three premises.

How Studio Marcus Kraft Shaped 12 Years of Visual Identity

Studio marcus kraft didn’t just design a magazine. The studio art directed and designed Hä? Magazine for an uninterrupted 12 years, in close collaboration with editor Rainer Brenner. That kind of sustained creative partnership is genuinely rare in independent publishing.

Think about what 12 years means in practice. It means developing a visual system flexible enough to accommodate 52 distinct topics — each one requiring its own visual logic — while maintaining enough consistency that the collection reads as a cohesive body of work. It means building relationships with photographers, illustrators, and artists over the long term, rather than recycling talent pools issue by issue.

The list of collaborators that passed through Hä? reads like a cross-section of contemporary European and international visual culture. Simon Trüb, Yves Suter, Randy Tischler, Peter Hauser, Anne Morgenstern, Eva Kurz, Fabian Unternährer, Heji Shin, Ornella Cacace, Ryan McGinley, Jamie Warren, Beni Bischof, Svenja Plaas, Marlon Ilg, Lina Müller, Richard Kern — among many others.

That roster is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate curatorial philosophy: bring in artists whose existing work carries energy, risk, and a specific point of view. Then direct that energy toward a health topic. The friction between an artist’s native aesthetic and the subject matter of a given issue is often where the most interesting visual solutions emerge.

The Art Direction Model That Made It Work

Studio marcus kraft’s approach to art direction on Hä? can be characterized as Subject-Led Visual Collision. Each issue started with a body topic. The art direction then asked: What visual language would be unexpected here? What aesthetic would force the reader to look at this subject differently?

This is distinct from conventional magazine design, which typically starts with brand consistency and asks how the content can be accommodated within that framework. Hä? reversed the hierarchy. The subject came first. The visual language was built around it, not imposed on top of it.

Over 12 years, that approach produced 52 different visual statements — each one coherent on its own terms, and collectively forming an archive that no single aesthetic framework could have produced.

The 1,000-Page Hardcover: What the Complete Collection Represents

The decision to compile all 52 issues into a single hardcover book is not merely archival. It’s a recontextualization.

As individual issues, each edition of Hä? Magazine existed in time — distributed at pharmacies, read in specific moments, then shelved or discarded. The physical book collapses that timeline. It places 12 years of work into a single object, which forces a different kind of reading.

Suddenly, you can trace the evolution of the design language across issues. You can see which visual strategies the studio returned to and which it abandoned. You can read the 52 body topics as a cumulative argument — an editorial statement about what young people deserve to know about their own bodies.

Over 1,000 pages is not a coffee table book. It’s a monograph. It’s closer in format and ambition to the kind of institution-cataloguing objects that museums produce for major retrospectives.

Why the Hardcover Format Is the Right Choice

A 1,000-page hardcover for a magazine archive might seem excessive. It isn’t. The format is load-bearing here.

Hä? Magazine spent 12 years existing in a context defined by disposability — pharmacies are not libraries, and free-distribution magazines are not collector’s items. The hardcover book reframes every page within it as something worth preserving. That reframing is itself an editorial act.

It also makes the collection citable. A researcher studying Swiss independent publishing, youth health communication, or design-led editorial work now has a single physical reference object. A design student can hold it. A curator can shelve it. An educator can assign it.

The format says: this work matters enough to last.

Why Hä? Magazine Is a Case Study in Long-Form Creative Partnership

Most publications run through creative directors on a faster cycle. The average tenure for a magazine art director is roughly two to four years — enough time to establish a visual identity and see it mature, but rarely enough to fully explore its possibilities.

Studio marcus kraft had 12 years.

That extended runway allowed for something unusual: a design practice that could actually learn from its own outputs, iterate in real time, and build institutional knowledge about what works for this specific audience, this specific subject matter, and this specific distribution context.

That’s a model worth studying. Not just for magazines, but for any long-form creative project where consistency and evolution need to coexist.

The Role of Editor Rainer Brenner

Any serious analysis of Hä? Magazine has to acknowledge Rainer Brenner, the editor who co-piloted the project for its entire run. The collaboration between Brenner and studio marcus kraft was foundational. Good editorial design doesn’t happen when designers and editors work in parallel — it happens when they build a shared language.

Brenner’s editorial philosophy — thorough research, no taboos, direct address to young readers — provided the structural logic that the visual design could then work within and against. That tension between editorial responsibility and visual provocation is what gave each issue its particular energy.

The Awards Record and What It Actually Signals

Hä? Magazine won a dozen awards over its run, including gold at the Art Directors Club of Switzerland. That’s a meaningful data point, but it requires some context.

Awards in design communicate peer recognition. They confirm that a piece of work has met or exceeded the standards that practitioners in the field have agreed to value. A gold at the ADC Switzerland, specifically, signals that the work was recognized as exceptional within a highly competitive Swiss design culture — a culture known for precision, formalism, and a certain resistance to visual excess.

For a punk-inflected health magazine to win gold in that context is genuinely significant. It suggests that the jury saw past the provocative surface and recognized the craft underneath. Good punk design is still design. It still requires technical rigor, compositional intelligence, and a clear understanding of what the work is trying to do.

Hä? had all of that. The awards confirmed it.

What Hä? Magazine Tells Us About the Future of Health Communication

Here’s a forward-looking claim worth making: the model that Hä? Magazine pioneered will become increasingly relevant as health misinformation continues to proliferate.

Young people do not lack access to health information. They lack access to health information that respects their intelligence, addresses their actual bodies and experiences, and arrives in a visual register they recognize as their own.

Clinical design is not neutral. White space, sans-serif fonts, and stock imagery of doctors and nurses all carry ideological weight. They signal authority, distance, and a relationship between expert and patient that many young people find alienating.

Hä? Magazine proved that you can produce rigorously accurate health content that looks nothing like a medical brochure — and that, in fact, that visual distance from conventional health aesthetics might be precisely what makes the content more accessible and more trusted.

The Punk-Health Publishing Model as a Design Framework

For designers and editors working in health communication today, the Hä? model offers a concrete framework. Start with the audience’s visual culture. Build editorial credibility through research, not aesthetic respectability. Treat each topic as a creative brief, not a content slot. Sustain the project long enough to develop genuine institutional knowledge.

That’s not a formula. Formulas produce forgettable work. It’s a set of orientations — a way of approaching the problem that keeps the audience at the center without condescending to them.

The Legacy of Hä? Magazine in Swiss and International Design

Switzerland has a specific relationship with graphic design. The International Typographic Style — the visual language developed in Zurich and Basel in the mid-20th century — shaped how the entire world thinks about grid systems, typography, and information design. Swiss design became synonymous with clarity, order, and a certain kind of confident restraint.

Hä? Magazine sits in productive tension with that tradition. It is unmistakably Swiss in its editorial rigor and production quality. But it refuses the restraint. The punk influence is real. The visual confrontation is intentional.

In this sense, the magazine represents a specific moment in Swiss design culture: the moment when the inherited formal vocabulary starts to be broken apart, not to reject it, but to find out what else it can do.

Studio marcus kraft is a meaningful actor in that moment. The Hä? project is one of its most sustained and clearly articulated statements.

Hä? Magazine as a Citable Reference: Three Core Theses

For researchers, educators, and design critics who want to engage with Hä? Magazine as a scholarly reference, here are three thesis-level claims that the project substantiates:

Thesis One: Aesthetic disruption is a legitimate health communication strategy. When design is deliberately unexpected, it interrupts habitual reading patterns and increases engagement. For young audiences resistant to conventional health messaging, visual provocation can function as an access point rather than a barrier.

Thesis Two: Long-form creative partnership produces qualitatively different work than project-based collaboration. The 12-year relationship between studio marcus kraft and editor Rainer Brenner allowed for iterative development, shared vocabulary, and a depth of audience understanding that short-term collaborations cannot replicate.

Thesis Three: Free-distribution publishing in institutional contexts (pharmacies, libraries, schools) creates unique conditions for reaching audiences who would not seek out the content independently. Hä? Magazine’s pharmacy distribution model placed provocative, progressive health content in a context where young readers encountered it incidentally — and that incidental encounter is itself an editorial strategy.

Why This Book Belongs on Your Shelf

There are design books, and then there are design arguments. The Hä? Magazine complete collection — 52 issues, 1,000+ pages, 12 years of work — is the second kind.

It doesn’t just document what the magazine looked like. It makes a case for what health communication can be, what design-led publishing can sustain, and what happens when you trust your audience enough to be honest with them about their own bodies.

Studio marcus kraft built something genuinely unusual here. A magazine with a punk attitude and a pharmacy address. A design practice with a 12-year attention span. A hardcover book that contains multitudes.

Hä? Magazine was never supposed to look this way. That’s what makes it worth studying.

All images © studio marcus kraft. Check out WE AND THE COLOR’s Graphic Design category for more.

#book #design #graphicDesign #hardcover #magazine #publication #StudioMarcusKraft

Hear the Visuals: The Stunning Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity by Studio Marcus Kraft

What do you think sound would look like? Not just sound waves on an oscilloscope, but the feeling, the tradition, the very essence of sound itself? It’s a fascinating question. For Klangwelt Toggenburg, an incredible institution nestled in the Swiss Alps, this wasn’t just a philosophical musing. It became the core challenge for their new visual identity. And let me tell you, the solution crafted by Zurich’s studio marcus kraft is something special. We’re talking about the Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity, a project that doesn’t just represent sound – it visually sings.

Imagine this: For over two decades, Klangwelt Toggenburg has been a unique hub. It’s a place dedicated to exploring sound, resonance, voice, and deep-rooted musical traditions. Think of the stunning foothills of the Alps in Eastern Switzerland, an area humming with an original singing and music culture. This isn’t just background noise; it’s the soul of the place. Now, picture a major evolution on the horizon: the opening of the brand new Klanghaus (Sound House) in May 2025. This isn’t just any building; it’s designed as a walk-in instrument, a space where architecture, nature, and sound merge in a way you likely won’t find anywhere else on Earth. Pretty amazing, right? This pivotal moment demanded a fresh look, a visual language that could carry Klangwelt from being a cherished “insider tip” to an institution with genuine international magnetism. That’s where the new Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity comes into play. Mirjam Hadorn, the CEO, puts it perfectly: “The opening marks an important milestone… The new image reflects our transformation.”

Typography in resonance: Identity design by studio marcus kraft for Klangwelt (Sound world)

Capturing the Echo: The Core Idea

So, how do you visually capture something as intangible yet powerful as sound and resonance, especially within such a rich cultural and natural context? Studio marcus kraft embarked on a three-year journey alongside Klangwelt Toggenburg to answer precisely that. They didn’t just slap on a new logo. Instead, they developed a comprehensive visual identity designed to communicate the sheer depth and complexity of Klangwelt. The result is thoughtful, intricate, and deeply connected to the subject matter.

At the absolute heart of this Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity lies something truly innovative: a custom-made, dynamic corporate typeface. Now, when we say dynamic, we mean it literally resonates visually. Think about overtones, those subtle higher frequencies that give a sound its unique color. Or think about sound frequencies rippling outwards. Think about the very landscape – the peaks and valleys of the Toggenburg region. The designers cleverly built a typeface that can be expanded using recurring letter elements. These elements stack and interact, creating a kind of typographic echo or resonance. It’s as if the letters themselves are vibrating, visually mimicking the core concepts of Klangwelt. Can you picture type that almost hums on the page or screen? It’s a brilliant way to translate auditory concepts into a visual medium.

The Resonating Typeface: A Closer Look at the Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity’s Star

This bespoke typeface isn’t just a gimmick; it’s the conceptual anchor for the entire system. Developed with the technical expertise of font engineer David Jonathan Ross, it allows for flexibility while maintaining a distinct character. Imagine posters where headlines seem to stretch and echo, reflecting the alpine landscape. Picture brochures with specific words that visually emphasized the idea of resonance. This modularity means the Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity can adapt to different contexts and messages without losing its core identity. It’s inspired by the very physics of sound and the geography of its home. You can almost see the sound propagating, the vibrations taking shape in the letterforms. It’s a thoughtful, sophisticated approach that goes far beyond standard font choices. Doesn’t it make you reconsider what typography can achieve?

A Symphony of Elements: More Than Just Letters

While the typeface is undoubtedly the star, studio marcus kraft understood that a powerful brand identity needs a full orchestra. The three-year rebranding process was truly holistic. They meticulously redesigned the entire visual system. This included defining the brand architecture – how different parts of Klangwelt relate visually. They developed a new imagery concept, likely drawing inspiration from the stunning natural surroundings and the human element of music-making.

Furthermore, a carefully considered color palette was introduced, perhaps reflecting both the earthiness of tradition and the vibrancy of sound. The materiality – the textures and finishes used on printed items or signage – was also part of the redesign, adding another sensory layer. Add to that thoughtfully crafted animations (developed by Miriam Palopoli), bringing the resonant typography to life digitally, and clear layout principles for consistency. This comprehensive approach ensures the Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity is cohesive and impactful across every single touchpoint. We’re talking about everything from the humble business card and intricate brochures to eye-catching posters, engaging video trailers, physical signage guiding visitors, dynamic social media content, unique merchandise, and a completely revamped website (built by Vitamin 2). It’s a testament to seeing the brand as a complete ecosystem. The first taste of this new identity actually came last year with the reopening of the updated Klangweg (Sound Trail), giving visitors an early glimpse of this exciting visual transformation.

Bridging Culture and Tourism Through Design

Marcus Kraft, the art director and designer behind the studio, highlights a key consideration: “As a cultural institution in a popular travel destination, Klangwelt Toggenburg operates at the exciting interface between culture and tourism.” This dual audience requires a delicate balance. The visual identity needs to speak to seasoned cultural enthusiasts and curious tourists alike. Kraft emphasizes that a major goal was “ensuring that the institution’s wide range of offers and diverse themes can be communicated as flexibly and recognizably as possible for the various audiences.” The dynamic, modular nature of the Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity, particularly the typeface, is perfectly suited for this challenge. It provides a strong, recognizable foundation while allowing for variations that can tailor the communication style as needed. It’s a smart system designed for real-world applications.

The Crescendo: Klanghaus Opening in 2025

All this incredible design work culminates beautifully with the grand opening of the Klanghaus. Mark your calendars for May 24th and 25th, 2025! This event promises a diverse cultural program celebrating sound in its many forms. Simultaneously, the Resonanzzentrum Peter Roth (Resonance Center) will open its doors, featuring a groundbreaking addition: Switzerland’s very first publicly accessible sound dome. Can you imagine the immersive sonic experiences awaiting visitors? The new Klangwelt Toggenburg Brand Identity will be fully deployed, providing the visual language for this exciting new chapter. It’s the perfect harmony of innovative architecture, unique programming, and a visual identity that truly understands and amplifies the core mission.

This project by studio marcus kraft for Klangwelt Toggenburg is more than just a successful rebranding. It’s a masterclass in translating complex, intangible concepts – sound, resonance, tradition, landscape – into a compelling and flexible visual system. It demonstrates how thoughtful design, especially innovative typography, can create deep meaning and connection. It truly makes you see the sound. What do you think? Does this approach change how you perceive the possibilities of brand identity design? It certainly offers a unique perspective worth exploring further.

About Klangwelt Toggenburg:

Nestled in the foothills of the Säntis Alps, Klangwelt Toggenburg serves as a unique cultural institution. It provides spaces for experiencing, developing, and researching sound and resonance. By maintaining and evolving traditions, Klangwelt Toggenburg preserves vital cultural heritage while simultaneously fostering environments for innovative sound experimentation.
Find out more: klangwelt.ch

About Studio Marcus Kraft:

Based in Zurich, Switzerland, studio marcus kraft is an award-winning design studio creating bespoke projects for national and international clients. Their focus lies in elaborate design concepts and exceptional typographic quality. They often collaborate with a wide network of photographers, architects, artists, and other specialists to develop multidisciplinary commissions. Many of their past works have gained international recognition through exhibitions and publications.
Explore their work: marcuskraft.com

Project Credits:

• Concept, Art Direction & Design: studio marcus kraft
• Font Engineering: David Jonathan Ross
• Animation: Miriam Palopoli
• Photography: Beat Bälzer & Ralph Brühwiler
• Camera & Video Editing: Axel Kindermann
• Website Development: Vitamin 2
• Sound Logo: Christian Zehnder

Klangwelt Toggenburg Team:

• CEO: Mirjam Hadorn
• Artistic Direction: Christian Zehnder
• Operations Management: Edi Hartmann
• Visual Communication & Marketing Assistance: Eva Macartney
• Project Lead Multimedia: Corinne Zimmermann

All images © by studio marcus kraft. Feel free to find other trending graphic design and branding projects from around the globe on WE AND THE COLOR.

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