Festa Major de Vilafranca 2024, a town festival visual identity

For the Town Hall of Vilafranca del Penedès we created the town festival visual identity for Vilafranca’s Festa Major 2024, under the slogan “EXPLOSIVA!”: a modular typographic logo, an illustration system, the festival book and merchandise that set a sales record.

The challenge

The Festa Major is a Catalan town’s main annual celebration, and Vilafranca is the main town of the Penedès, the wine region southwest of Barcelona. It brings parades, traditional dances, music and local food to the streets. Every year it needs an image that can be a poster, a slogan, a T-shirt, a book and a market stall at once, and that people want to wear. The identity had to be flexible enough to apply to very different formats, from a small icon to a large key visual on a stage, and strong enough to represent a festival that involves the whole town.

Merchandise is also an important source of funding for the festival, so the image could not only be representative: it also had to sell.

The process: an explosive motif and a modular logo

Together with the organizers we came up with “EXPLOSIVA!”, the slogan that sums up this year’s Festa Major. The main visual element is an explosive motif symbolizing the burst of emotions the festival brings, built around a modular typographic logo that adapts its complexity and orientation to each use, from simplified icons to elaborate key visuals. A palette of bold primary colors (red, yellow and blue) reflects the energy of the festival.

To enrich the visual story we developed an illustration system that captures everyday elements of the festival: musical instruments, traditional costume and local food. Subtle details that are nonetheless essential to the cultural fabric of the event.

The system was applied across all the festival material. On the festival stall, the explosive motif and the slogan covered the counter. On the stage screen, the image appeared large in red, yellow and blue. It also went onto adult and children’s T-shirts (one of them in yellow), tote bags, a hand fan and the festival wristband. And we designed the Festa Major book, with a red cover and image-rich interior pages that explain the figures of the town’s processions, such as the Ball d’en Serrallonga (a traditional dance) and the Àliga (a giant eagle figure). We also took part in the copywriting.

The result

The project strengthened the Festa Major’s identity as the town’s leading cultural celebration. The merchandise we designed also broke its sales record and helped fund the organization of the festival: the best proof that a good image does more than communicate, it sells.

It is a project that sums up how we work with culture and territory: a clear idea that can be said in one word, a graphic system that adapts to any medium, and constant attention to the elements local people recognize as their own, such as instruments, costume and food. When the image of a festival can be worn, it becomes part of the festival itself.