The visual identity for the 2022 edition of Next Level – Festival for Games, held at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Zollverein in Essen, translates the logic of gaming into a bold and flexible graphic system. Organised by the NRW KULTURsekretariat, the festival explored the artistic, cultural and educational dimensions of digital games through exhibitions, performances, workshops and discussions. Its programme followed the guiding principle “Play! Perform! Debate! Create!”, while the Games Parcours, curated by Tobias Kopka, brought together 23 games under the theme “Separate Together.” The concept examined how games can create shared experiences and new forms of connection—even when players remain physically or virtually apart.
The identity draws on the familiar visual language of gaming devices and digital interfaces. Oversized buttons, switches, control panels and display fields become the building blocks of a modular design language. Bright, luminous colours contrast with deep black backgrounds, evoking game controllers, arcade machines and glowing interactive screens. Rather than simply illustrating the subject of gaming, the identity behaves like a game itself: dynamic, responsive and open to constant transformation.
Across posters, publications, digital media, signage and spatial applications, the individual elements can be rearranged, enlarged and recombined. Typography and information are embedded directly into the interface, functioning simultaneously as content and as graphic controls. Every application appears like a different configuration of the same imagined device.
The communication therefore becomes an active playing field. It invites audiences to navigate, discover and participate, mirroring a festival in which visitors move between playing, watching, discussing and creating. Against the monumental industrial architecture of Zollverein, the luminous system establishes a striking contemporary layer—connecting digital game culture with physical space and turning the festival itself into a shared interface.