Ars Independent Festival is an annual, interdisciplinary event dedicated to audio-visual culture in Katowice, Poland. Our artist was commissioned to create promotional materials. A tedious post-edit was made to create the halftone effects and distortion. Let's check out how it turned out in prints. Enjoy!

Ars Independent Festival is an annual, interdisciplinary event dedicated to audio-visual culture in Katowice, Poland. The core of the festival is a presentation of international cinema, which is the starting point for exploration of other cultural texts (animation, music, and video games). At the heart of Ars Independent are the competitions: Black Horse (feature films) and Black Horse of Animation (animated shorts).

- Marta Gawin

The trophy in the film competitions, in addition to the Black Horse title and the financial prize, is a statuette of a horse, made by Olaf Brzeski. Its body is formed from black metal rods, interconnected and bent in Brzeski’s signature style. The statuette is far removed from classic depictions of the animal. It leaves an ambiguous, tragicomic impression.

- Marta Gawin

The sculpture became the basis for creating the graphic sign to identify Ars Independent. From a certain perspective and photographed from above, the figure started to resemble African animal masks. In this way, combining the sculpture of a young Polish artist and tribal art, the distinctive image of the Black Horse was born. Rebellious, untamed, non-normative – just like the films, animations, music and video games presented at the Ars Independent

- Marta Gawin

The Black Horse pictogram is constructed of black lines (a reference to the black rods of the statuette), its aspect ratio (1 to 2) and axial symmetry reflect the shape of African masks. The sign is accompanied by Simplon BP and Simplon BP Mono typefaces, whose elongated, technical letter shapes complete the character of the logo.

- Marta Gawin

All photographs in the promotional materials were edited in a specific way, using halftone effects and shape distortion. It helped achieving a psychedelic, punk aesthetic. Another surprise were materials printed on mirrored Plexiglas (access passes) or Chromolux (catalogue cover, business cards). One’s face could be seen reflected in them, with the interposed image of a mad horse.

- Marta Gawin

ABOUT MARTA GAWIN

Marta Gawin (born in 1985, Poland) is a multidisciplinary graphic designer specialized in visual identity, sign system, poster, information, exhibition and editorial design. Since her MA in Graphic Design (Academy of Fine Arts, Katowice) in 2011, she has been working as a freelancer for cultural institutions and commercial organizations. Her design approach is conceptual, logical and content-driven. She treats graphic design as a field of visual research and formal experiments.

See more of her artworks on Behance and Website.