Launch Recite Me assistive technology
Two white posters with bold, black serif typography. The first reads “Lausanne Under Ground” with a list of music and film credits, while the second reads “Film & Music Festival”.

Graphic Design: Demian Conrad builds festival identity by interfering with printing process

—
Date
21 May 2014

To be totally honest I never knew the Swiss city of Lausanne had a film and music festival, let alone an underground film and music festival but it does, and last year the organisers were savvy enough to call on the design talents of Demian Conrad.

The festival’s theme of “accident” lent itself nicely to a technique Demian had experimented with over recent years known as water random offset printing (or WROP for all you acronym fans.) This allows him to intervene with the printing process to create random effects, building the identity’s cohesion through happy accidents.

“People won’t be able to read the entire communication at the first sight,” Demian says. “They need time to discover, by peeling off layers of images one after the other.”

A series of black and white posters for the “Lausanne Under Ground Film & Music Festival”. The designs use bold typography and heavy black ink strokes to partially obscure the text.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

A black and white poster for the “Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival” stands on a city pavement. The text lists the “12th edition 16–20.10.13” and the website “luff.ch”.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

A stack of magazines with the title “LAUSANNE UNDER GROUND” printed in a bold, serif typeface. A dark, blurred gradient shape cuts across the cover, partially obscuring the text.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

Two posters for the “Lausanne Underground Film&Music Festival”. One features a high-contrast black and white photograph of a pile of waste and debris. The other is a white fold-out brochure containing a grid of small black and white photographs and columns of text.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

An open book displays a spread titled “F.J. Ossang: The Punk Wave of Total Cinema”. The pages feature columns of French text alongside black and white photographs of people and landscapes.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

An open magazine spread featuring a black page with white text and a white page with black text. The black page includes a grainy aerial photograph of a city and several smaller black and white images.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

An open magazine spread featuring a programme of events for “Jeudi Thursday 17.10.12” and “Vendredi Friday 18.10.13”. The pages are filled with columns of French text, small black and white portraits, and a graphic of a heart above the word “plakatif”.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

A black and white typographic poster for the “Lausanne Under Ground Film & Music Festival”. The text lists various films, musicians and workshops, with the dates “16–20.10.13” and the website “luff.ch” at the bottom.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

A typographic poster for the “Lausanne Under Ground Film & Music Festival”. The central text is flanked by lists of film screenings and musical acts, with the date “16–20.10.13” and the website “luff.ch” at the bottom.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

A black and white poster for the “Lausanne Under Ground Film & Music Festival”. The title is set in a bold, serif typeface across five lines, with a grainy, textured background. The 12th edition of the event is listed as taking place from 16–20 October 2013. Lists of performers and workshops flank the central text, with the website “luff.ch” at the bottom.
Above

Demian Conrad: Luff 13

Share Article

About the Author

Rob Alderson

—

Rob Alderson is a freelance writer, editor and strategist. He was previously editor-in-chief of It’s Nice That and WePresent, and editor of Design Week. He publishes the newsletter Undo, which tries to make sense of how AI is changing design work, the design process and the design industry.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.