If you’re reading this story you may have noticed that our website has had a colourful refresh! This new look represents our new branding, designed by North Wales-based design agency View Creative.
Launched in May 2023, the re-brand has been just one part of a strategic review process that has been ongoing since 2019, ensuring that we update all areas of our business to be fit for the future. We’ve been working on the re-brand since September 2022 and numerous staff, board, volunteers, funders and a myriad of other friends and colleagues have been involved.
As with all areas of our work, we remain committed to our founding principles: using the tradition of eisteddfodau, friendly competitions and showcasing the arts and culture, as a means of promoting international peace and friendship. We hope our fresh new look will help us achieve this whilst attracting new audiences and supporters, and aligning us with other leading international festivals.
Hopefully one of the first things people will notice about the new branding is the vibrant colour palette. This has been collated through reviewing our photographic archive, inspired by the colours of international costumes, flags and parades over the last 76 years. Our visitors frequently tell us that the visual vibrancy and bold colour schemes of our events stick in their memory.
Inspiration has also been drawn from our incredible town and its surroundings, looking at shapes and how these can be translated into typography and graphics. Shapes are inspired by iconic natural and man-made features in Llangollen, the original logo and the magnificent floral displays which are such a unique aspect of our Eisteddfod. Importantly, the brand works bilingually, balancing both our place in Wales and the wider world.
The new brand makes use of the Welsh letter LL that for many conjures thoughts of Welsh language and place. Ll (upper case version: LL) is a digraph (two symbols that count as one letter), the 16th letter in the Welsh alphabet, and the start of over 400 place names across the country, including of course our incomparable hometown.
Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod is a truly unique and incredible annual event. The 2023 edition runs Tuesday 4 – Sunday 9 July and comprises a buzzing outdoor site, world-class evening concert series, and diverse mix of traditional and contemporary music and dance competitions. To find out more see all events here.
