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Sona Festival

Identity Poster System Editorial Concept

A concept identity for a three-day cultural music festival that thinks of itself as one continuous performance. Type-led, editorial, designed to scale from a 4mm wristband to a six-metre banner without changing its voice.

Sona FESTIVAL · VOL. 03 · MMXXVI

The idea

A festival is usually designed as three nights, three lineups, three posters. Sona is designed as one. One continuous performance broken across three sundowns. The lineup reads as a single ribbon of names from Friday’s opener to Sunday’s closer, the typography never breaks character, and the rule line is the thread that stitches every surface together.

The whole system runs on one decision. Type, rule, type. Italic transitional serif for names. A single horizontal hairline in the festival’s clay accent. Helvetica for everything supporting. No logomark, no flourish, no year-over-year redesign. The festival is the brand. The artists rotate through it.

Editorial in tone, anonymous-looking from a distance, dense up close. The kind of poster that earns a second look on the wall.

Mark & lockup

There is no logomark. The italic wordmark is the mark, and the volume number (always Roman) is the secondary anchor. Together they form the system. Nothing else is allowed in the lockup.

Sona FESTIVAL
Primary wordmark
III VOLUME THREE · MMXXVI
Volume marker
Sona VOL. 03 · MMXXVI
Clay colorway
LINEUP RIBBON Khaled Selim · Layla Ozz · Nour Project · Mira Halabi · El Far3i · Bint Beirut · & twenty-two more
Lineup typography

Palette

Ink and bone do the heavy lifting. Clay is a deliberate scarcity. One allocation per layout, never two. Earth is reserved for nocturnal applications. Late-night signage, after-hours print, the closing-night programme.

#0D0D0D
Ink, the line
#F0E9D6
Bone, the page
#D4634A
Clay, the rule
#6D5642
Earth, the night

Typography

Wordmark, italic
Sona
Display serif. Tiempos / Times
A long weekend, three rooms, twenty-eight acts, and the same warm light at every stage.
Supporting. Helvetica Neue
11 to 13 OCT 2026 · ABU DHABI · THREE STAGES · ONE LINE-UP

Applications

Four surfaces the system runs across. The A2 wheatpaste poster, the day pass ticket, the social-square lineup announce, and the three-day wristband. Same composition logic on each. Italic, rule, tight type.

Sona FESTIVAL · VOL. 03 · MMXXVI 11 to 13 OCT ABU DHABI Khaled Selim Layla Ozz Nour Project Mira Halabi El Far3i Bint Beirut & 22 MORE · SONAFEST.AE
A2 wheatpaste poster
Sona VOL. 03 · MMXXVI LINEUP REVEAL tuesday, 12 august
Social 1:1 announce
Sona VOL. 03 · MMXXVI FRI 11 OCT · STAGE A 03 PASS 0428
Day pass ticket
Sona VOL. 03 3-DAY 11–13 OCT ABU DHABI
3-day pass wristband

Notes