Lee Goater and Dalton Maag's identity and typeface for Leeds 2023’s European Capital of Culture bid

Designer Lee Goater and typography studio Dalton Maag have collaborated on an identity and typeface for Leeds in its bid to become European Capital of Culture 2023.

Based around bold geometric shapes, the graphics and type are used together with photography showing Leeds’ various cultural initiatives. The identity was tested with different accessibility groups, helping to ensure the “experimental” visuals remained inclusive.

The aim was to create an identity communicating “ambition, experimentation, collaboration and openness,” Lee explains. Lee Goater headed up the creative team which includes local emerging studio Hungry Sandwich Club, digital strategists Head Office, and Alex Finney, a recent graphic design graduate of Leeds College of Art.

“What appealed to me in the brief was that it was all about creating an identity that belongs to everyone and can work at a community level as well as at an international scale,” Lee says. “It needed to be playful, intriguing and somehow even challenging. We wanted to make something that makes you turn your head, pause to figure it out and understand it."

Dalton Maag’s creative director Tom Foley explains that the typeface needed to be legible while retaining “the playful nature of the characters”.

“We were tasked with taking the conceptual letter forms created for the pitch and developing them into a European language typeface, including language variations and character sets,” he says.

The Leeds 2023 typeface will be open source, which the team hopes will encourage its use by the city’s design community.