Bringing the Baltic scene together in Riga

TBS: Some context.

While living and freelancing in Riga, I became involved with The Baltic Scene - a small collective documenting and promoting music from across the three Baltic countries.

In February 2014, I helped bring its club-night series to Riga.

That meant doing rather more than designing a poster.

Three countries. One very late night.

The Baltic Scene connected musicians and producers across Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

For the Riga event, I programmed a line-up of DJs and live electronic acts from across the region and took responsibility for the visual direction around the night.

The existing Baltic Scene identity gave me somewhere to start, but for the event I developed a much stronger graphic language around its triangular forms.

Three points. Three countries. And a shape that could expand into everything else we needed.

Designing something that had to work everywhere.

A club night doesn't really have one format.

The identity had to work on posters and flyers around Riga, online announcements, individual artist graphics and the practical signage people would encounter once they arrived.

And each of those things had a slightly different job.

A poster needed to communicate a fairly substantial line-up quickly. An artist announcement could concentrate on one performer. Social graphics had to feel recognisably part of the same event even when seen individually.

And inside the venue, the visual language needed enough simplicity to survive darkness, movement and projection.

Then we made it enormous.

The event took place at 9K1, an industrial venue in Riga, across multiple spaces.

On the night, a VJ extended the visual language into the venue using projection mapping across large triangular structures - taking the geometry we'd established in the identity and turning it into part of the physical environment.

And people actually turned up.

The venue was packed.

Which, when you've spent the previous weeks organising performers, making posters, creating artist graphics, sorting signage and generally trying to make a club night exist, is a particularly satisfying design outcome.

I even found time to play a set myself.

Although by that point I was mostly just very tired.