Two dots gave a festival a face — without stealing the artists’ spotlight

Berlin’s Pictoplasma festival has spent two decades keeping its own branding quiet so the artists’ characters could take centre stage. Its new identity, designed by Vilnius-based andstudio, finally gives the festival a face — made of just two dots.

The identity is built on type. The studio adapted the Melun typeface with the foundry, adding a glyph for a pair of eyes, so the wordmark itself reads as a face: letters for the body, two dots for eyes. Nothing is drawn on top, so the mark never becomes a full character competing with the work on show. Colours and layouts change per city edition; the type and the dots stay constant.

Motion designer Greta Griniute built a motion identity from the same two elements, and the system extends to cheap, physical touches: two holes cut into festival tents, dots stuck on objects around the city as a guerrilla campaign, and a flash tattoo booth offering a single design — two dots.

The rebrand launched with the 2026 Berlin festival, and tickets sold out six weeks before the event — earlier than usual, which for a festival working with shrinking cultural budgets means more time to plan the next edition.

Why it matters to independent teams: restraint is a strategy, not a compromise. andstudio resisted the obvious move — a big mascot — and built a system a small team can actually run: type it, dot it, done, in any city, on any budget. When your brand has to share the stage with your clients’ or community’s work, designing less can be the bravest call.

Source: Creative Boom, “Two dots give Pictoplasma a face in andstudio’s rebrand” (October 14, 2026)