New visual identity for mozarteum university
To kick off the 2023 summer semester, mozarteum university is launching a new corporate design. The centerpiece is a "monumental" typography and a university website that is intended to inspire as well as inform as a digital communication port. The development process was accompanied by the two renowned digital agencies Dept (concept) and pixelart (development).
Contact
iris.wagner@moz.ac.at
Typographic Empowerment. With Monument Extended by Pangram Pangram, the mozarteum university makes a typographically confident statement. The straightforward monochrome new university logo builds a visual bridge to the characteristic architecture at Salzburg's Mirabellplatz 1. With the change to the English wording in the logo, the university responds to the internationality of its students, teachers and cooperation partners. The dot symbolically stands for the power of the beginning, but also for that of completion, for focus and radiance, and for the energy released by art: Deconstructed into different variations, it is the central starting element of a visual identity that unites music, performing and visual arts under one roof with 15 departments and 7 institutes and also offers an inter- and transdisciplinary workspace with the Institute for Open Arts.
Playful Diversity. From A for Applied Theatre to Z for Zither - around 100 artistic, artistic-research and pedagogical studies as well as 60 courses, 2,200 students and 550 teachers from all over the world make the mozarteum university a place of living diversity, which is expressed, among other things, with a palette of 28 shades that change every 24 hours in the digital world. Away from the fixation on a limited color spectrum to multicolored activities. In an allusion to play in music and art, playful accents are also set in design: "I think Mozart never buried the child in himself, or at least gave him as much space as his adult self. Picasso, in turn, said that it took him a lifetime to draw like a child. Playfulness is by all means a serious matter and suits an art university well," says Rector Elisabeth Gutjahr.
Multi-stage development process. The project began with a pitch in August 2021, in which four agencies from Vienna, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Zurich presented design concepts, including initial digital interaction paradigms. The pitch was won by the award-winning digital agency Dept (formerly Hinderling Volkart, Zurich), which subsequently developed the concept on the basis of joint workshops with the university's stakeholders. The digital Salzburg local heroes pixelart are responsible for the development of the website.
Intuitive navigation. Thanks to a clear study finder, a simple person search, a modern event calendar and a comprehensive news section (German/English), (future) students as well as teachers, university staff, event audience and partners can now intuitively navigate through the digital university universe and are in a few clicks in the areas relevant to them. A digital cartography of cooperations provides a quick overview of numerous international partnerships of the mozarteum university.
Work in progress. The launch of the corporate design and university website marks the completion of the first phase of a development process that will continue on an ongoing basis. More to come soon!
