Since 1921, the Mozartfest Würzburg has presented orchestra and chamber music concerts each year. With the inauguration of artistic director Evelyn Meinig, the musical program was broadened from Baroque to elements of contemporary, even popular music. In addition, she realized that the Mozartfest’s graphic presence was not appropriate for younger audiences, so she asked the Q team to rethink and refocus the overall visual concept.

With its ornamental playfulness, the legacy logotype evoked the Baroque era, but it was unrelated to later musical styles, and its legibility deteroriated as its size decreased. Our goal was to “de-squiggle” the logotyope and open it to current musical tastes. Together with calligrapher Petra Beisse, we created an M as a typographic icon (for Mozartfest) and combined it with a modern sans-serif font for the event name. In June, when the Mozartfest begins, the whole City of Würzburg is dominated by the new visual approach.

The audience – 25,000 guests per year – learned about the new design in two phases: In the first three years, the new “M” was displayed prominently on the cover of the program brochures. The red booklets echoed the visual appearance of previous years, but they also reinforced the new design concept. Today – after the successful introduction phase – the “M” is positioned smaller on the bottom right of the brochure and the guiding theme is brought to the foreground.

In addition to the basic layout, Q is also responsible for the image spreads. (Typesetting is provided by a freelance designer in Würzburg.)                    

Our team developed the initial design concept for the new Mozartfest website. Programming and editing are provided by an agency in Würzburg.