São Luiz Municipal Theater - Identity / 2024—2026
Identity / Art Direction / Print
Located in Lisbon, São Luiz is a theatre open to national and international artistic creation, thought and knowledge. A place for the exchange of ideas, its programme is made up of theatre, dance and music performances, film screenings, debates and conversations.
In the last quarter of 2024, São Luiz challenged us to rethink its visual communication strategy for 2025. The goal was to strengthen the Theatre's presence in the city, making it more energetic and vibrant on the one hand, while able to embrace the diversity of the artistic programme on the other. With the challenge in mind, we began by rethinking the São Luiz logotype, making it the epicentre of the new visual impulse. We looked at the architecture of the theatre building and found in the imposing window that defines the façade — the janelão — the perfect starting point. Inspired by its forms, we designed a unique typeface that balances irreverence with familiarity, and is bold enough to consolidate São Luiz as an attractive and dynamic cultural hub in Lisbon.
With the logotype functioning as the heart of the Theatre's renewed graphic communication, we created a flexible visual system reinforced by a vibrant colour palette. This solution makes it possible to integrate into the Theatre's visual communication images with varied languages, drawn from the shows on stage, allowing São Luiz to fulfil its vocation as a house of cultural welcome — celebrating the diversity of the artistic programme, without losing its identity.
Visual System
With the logotype taking centre stage in the Theatre's renewed identity, we created, for the communication directed at the artistic programme, a modular and flexible visual system. Within it, the information hierarchy was studied to create a standardised logic, which includes a block reserved for the show's image created by its respective team. The show's details appear in two complementary blocks, whose arrangement varies according to the volume and characteristics of the information itself.
Although mobile and of variable dimensions, these two blocks preserve, as a cohesive element in São Luiz's communication, a formal pattern in which, alongside the application of colour, the harmonisation of the grotesque typeface family — used for titles — with the serif face — used for supporting information — stands out. The pair of solid colours chosen for each event originates from the photography used. This event-focused approach to colour generates a broad chromatic spectrum that reinforces the uniqueness of each show, without diminishing the presence of the São Luiz identity.
