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Identities, websites and products for 16 companies that move fast.

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04 / 16

Client
Noturna
Sector
Dance festival
Year
2025
Duration
12 weeks · 3 people
Disciplines
Festival identity, Motion, Wayfinding

Lisbon’s nine-night dance and music festival, with an identity that turns like its performers.

A dancer in red light, arms outstretched mid-turn

A poster can only stand still. So we designed an identity that turns, and made the festival look the way it sounds.

The brief

In six years Noturna grew from one warehouse in Marvila to forty venues across the city. Each year a different artist drew the poster, so nobody recognised it from one summer to the next.

Audiences also got lost. Moving between venues at two in the morning, they could not tell a Noturna door from any other club.

The idea

The wordmark is a performer. It turns, splits and settles in time with the music, and each of the nine nights has its own movement.

The same turns became the wayfinding: red flags angled towards the next venue, numbered by night, readable from the end of a street.

What we made

  • Festival identity and motion system
  • Nine nightly title sequences
  • Posters, programme and tickets
  • Wayfinding for forty venues
  • Trailer and social kit
A dancer spinning under red light, her dress blurred by the movement
Night four: Companhia Vento Sul.

One red, on stage and on paper

The lighting gels and the poster ink were matched to the same red, so a photograph from the stage needs no grading before it becomes a poster the next morning.

Nine nights on one wall

Every night the crews pasted over the whole wall with that night’s poster. Same red, same name, a new movement. Scroll through the week.

Noite 01 / 09Qui 4 Set · Armazém 16, Marvila

  1. Noite 1: Qui 4 Set, Armazém 16, Marvila. Movement: Settle.
  2. Noite 2: Sex 5 Set, Lux Frágil, Santa Apolónia. Movement: Turn.
  3. Noite 3: Sáb 6 Set, Teatro Capitólio, Parque Mayer. Movement: Split.
  4. Noite 4: Dom 7 Set, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Bairro Alto. Movement: Lean.
  5. Noite 5: Seg 8 Set, Musicbox, Cais do Sodré. Movement: Fall.
  6. Noite 6: Ter 9 Set, Village Underground, Alcântara. Movement: Spin.
  7. Noite 7: Qua 10 Set, Armazém 16, Marvila. Movement: Gather.
  8. Noite 8: Qui 11 Set, Lux Frágil, Santa Apolónia. Movement: Scatter.
  9. Noite 9: Sex 12 Set, Coliseu dos Recreios, Baixa. Movement: Bow.

How the mark moves

Each letter turns on its own axis, a beat behind the one before, like a line of dancers. Slowed down, it opens every night’s title sequence.

A Noturna poster pasted on a weathered Lisbon wall
A board of twelve frames showing the Noturna wordmark turning and splitting
Street poster in Marvila, and the motion study it came from: turn, split, settle.
A crowd with raised hands in front of a stage washed in red light
Night seven, Armazém 16.

What changed

  1. sold out a week before opening

    For the first time in the festival’s history.

  2. venues, one system

    Each one marked with the same red flag.

  3. views of the trailer in its first fortnight

    With no paid promotion.

Who made it

Orvel

  • Kayode AdebayoMotion directionLondon
  • Tomás FerreiraDesign directionLisbon
  • Anjali RaoCreative directionLondon

With

Client team
Beatriz Lobo, André Sequeira
Dancers
Companhia Vento Sul
Photography
Nuno Prates
Print
Gráfica Arco, Lisbon
Next project Skincare, 2024VULCAMineral skincare from the Azores, packaged to glow on a shelf and photograph well on a phone.
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