The Grand Balcony Campaign
Principal• Date added
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Biennale de Montréal is a Montréal-based multidisciplinary arts event that takes place bi-annually.
Montreal-based strategy and design firm Principal was commissioned to create the new organisation's brand identity in 2013 and the visual identity for the first edition of the event in 2014, titled L'avenir (which translates to looking forward). Principal and the Biennale de Montréal then collaborated again in 2016 for Le Grand Balcon (The Grand Balcony).
Client
Biennale de Montréal
Year
2017
Creative Director
Patrick Pellerin
Bryan-K. Lamonde
Art Director
Bryan-K. Lamonde
In 2013, Biennale de Montréal became an independent non-profit organisation dedicated to organising and promoting the biannual event, which was renamed BNLMTL. As part of this reorganisation, Biennale de Montréal entered into a key partnership with the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, becoming its main partner and venue.
"The typographical approach was designed to give the event an ambiguous presence, halfway between classic and contemporary."
The visual identity for Le Grand Balcon was developed in collaboration with the Biennale's curatorial team and the communications staff at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the organisation's main partner and venue. In the words of its curator, Philippe Pirotte, "Le Grand Balcon was freely inspired by Jean Genet's play Le Balcon, which made this platform a space for contestation between revolution and counter-revolution, reality and illusion".
The challenge was to create a strong visual identity capable of carrying the event by evoking its main themes: pleasure, sensuality and hedonism, but also reality, illusion and ambiguity. These themes took shape in fluid and vaporous graphic representations, appearing in irregular and unusual ways on the various communication pieces of the event.
Principal
A strategy and design firm based in Montreal, Principal brings together branding and digital professionals to help organisations define and express their identity. They have developed an integrated design approach that reinforces the cultural, reputational and financial value of an organisation while leaving a positive, lasting mark on the world.
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