Mekudeshet 2017

Industry
- Culture
Services
- Branding | Design

Challenge

The Mekudeshet festival was born from the vision of bridging over the complex conflicts that are inherent to Jerusalem and converting them into unique artistic and cultural connections. The festival’s organizers challenged us to create a language that communicates the festival’s vision while capturing their independent, rebellious spirit, and also reaches the widest range of audiences possible. We immediately realized that for us to communicate their vision so authentically, we would need to create something that did not yet exist.
Solution

We drew inspiration from authentic people, real Jerusalem residents that live and breathe the different conflicts day after day and are working to change the reality through different cultural fields. We developed a new language that is based on a creative technique of generative and computational design elements: we mapped the daily route of these people through GPS technology. That is how the original, unique, in-your-face design language came about. The design language integrates different “patterns” and is composed of routes that dissolve cultural boundaries in Jerusalem.

The Entire Story in 90 Seconds

Play

The Entire Story in 90 Seconds

Play

The Name and Logo

In Jewish culture, the term “Mekudeshet” captures the exact moment when the non-committed become committed. The festival’s vision, to give its audience a transformative experience, corresponds with the term Mekudeshet, as well as with the sanctity attributed to Jerusalem, that holds the power to mend conflict. The mending throughout the different worlds was expressed in the logo which contains 3 languages, befitting of the only city in the world that has urban signage in 3 languages as per the city’s directive.

The Name and Logo

Dissolving Borders

The festival’s main event titled “Dissolving Borders” selects 10 Jerusalem residents that work each day to dissolve the borders of controversy. The search for a creative concept that transcends borders, led to ground-breaking thinking: mapping the routes of the border dissolvers across town using GPS technology and incorporating their route patterns in the branding. Each pattern was assigned its own special character using an abstract brush representing the content world of its creator. After extensive trial-and-error, we produced an original, revolutionary language that reflected the cultural eclecticism and the independent spirit of the festival. The dynamic identity we developed accompanies the different events and the marketing communication at all touchpoints, both online and offline. At a later stage, the innovation behind the process would win several prestigious international awards.

Behind the concept

Understanding that the platform’s central differentiation lies in being open and accessible to everyone, in a way that allows a direct and straightforward connection between the parties has also been the basis of the design concept.

- 2018
  
  Creativity | international awards
- 2018
  
  Lisbon | international advertising festival
- 2018
  
  Davey Awards
- 2018
  
  24th annual | integrated campaign excellence

“

Open for me is a partnership that has become a mating (in the clinical sense), from which a unique offspring was born that carries the DNA of Open and Mekudeshet. A brilliant and sensitive offspring that we raise together

Naomi Bloch Fortis,
Founder, partner and VP of Marketing

For more fascinating growth stories

- The Israel Philharmonic
  
  Tell an old story in a new way
- Mekudeshet 2018

We would love to help you grow, too

If you have a project in need of branding.
If your brand requires a new strategy.
If it’s time to refresh the brand language or design concept.
If you want to work for us and with us to grow brands together.

Just call us or shoot us an email. Prefer we call you? Fill out your details here and send them off to us.