Moravská filharmonie Olomouc

The Moravian Philharmony of Olomouc is among the most famous concert halls in the Czech Republic. The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra – one of the oldest symphony orchestras in the country – and its associate ensemble performs mostly pieces of classical music from the 19th and 20th century, while also promoting Czech and international contemporary music. This desire to cultivate a musical legacy and at the same time to dive into the contemporaneity of musical composition makes the Philharmony a modern institution that above all wants to keep music alive.

In 2019, Studio Marvil got in charge for the new identity of the Moravian Philharmony. They designed a sober black-and-white identity that suits the classical anchoring of the orchestra, based on a pattern of what we imagine to be sound waves, drawn with a thin line or applied directly to images in order to get a perturbation and make the sound visible and physical. There is however a twist in this sobriety with the bold typographic choice of Kessler from Production Type, used in Text and Display styles. Even though Kessler has an elegance due to its inscriptional legacy, some original strokes such as the lowercase r’s curvy terminal, could have been harder to accept for an institution: but here Kessler is projected at a size of several meters directly onto the facade of the 19th-century building. The f in “filharmonie” was also modified in order to make it look more like a cello’s F hole. The discrete detail is however crucial to link the concert hall to its name and make it concrete. The use of Kessler shows a will of the Moravian Philharmony of Olomouc to position itself as a contemporary institution with all the originality of its region and its famous composers.