Stencil poster campaign: FM Alternativa de Vilafranca

Vilafranca’s FM Alternativa asked for an image with a stance. This is a case of a stencil poster campaign for an alternative festa major (the annual town festival): a slogan, an identity and a set of posters built with hand-made stencils, spray paint and scanned paper.

The challenge

The organization needed a combative identity to position FM Alternativa as an antifascist space, in the face of a rising far right and reactionary discourse. In Catalonia a festa major is a town’s yearly celebration, with concerts and activities in the streets, and this organization’s version is understood as a popular alternative. The image had to feel like it came from the street and not from a communications department, with a direct message that could be understood at a glance.

The process

We proposed the slogan “DEFENSEM EL CARRER” (Defend the street), which joins a fighting spirit with the street as the public space where rights and freedoms are fought for.

The graphic language starts from the stencil, spray paint and graffiti as the street’s tools of protest. To get there we did not settle for a typeface that imitated them: we made real stencils by hand, on cardboard, with symbols and figures, and produced a series of spray-paint prints on paper. We then scanned and digitized those prints to build the artwork in an organic, authentic way. The stains, the edges and the imperfections are real.

The poster pairs wide, very heavy black type with red stencils of running figures and symbols. It carries the festival dates, the band names in a hierarchy of sizes, and the logo of La Barraca, Festa Major Popular de Vilafranca del Penedès. A touch of turquoise marks some details. There is a version made for social media, with a red flame stencil, and an animation that can be watched on Instagram.

The result

FM Alternativa got a campaign where message and process point in the same direction: the slogan talks about the street and the image is made with the tools of the street. The poster works pasted on a wall among other posters, and also on a phone screen in its social media format.

For the studio it is a case where the hands-on process is part of the solution: making the stencils and scanning them gave a texture that no digital typeface could have matched. If you run a festival, an event or an organization with a clear position and want an image that conveys it with real materials, we can work on it from the slogan through to the posters and the social media pieces.