The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2024
Glød Light Festival gives Stavanger's darkest season a bokeh-lit typographic identity
A new light festival in Stavanger, Norway, brands the dark of January with typography that imitates bokeh — depth of field and shifting focus.
Stavanger Glød
What it had to solve
Glød is a light festival in Stavanger, Norway, first held in January 2024, created to raise people's joy and quality of life during the darkest time of the year. It needed a visual identity that could move between informative, playful and lively.
How it works
Glød is a light festival in Stavanger, Norway, first held in January 2024. It was created to increase people's joy and quality of life during the darkest time of the year, turning the season into a celebration of light, creativity and community.
The brand idea was to make the identity itself behave like light. The visual identity is typographic at its core, inspired by the bokeh effect — referencing depth of field and shifting focus — so the profile moves between informative, playful and lively while emulating the vibrancy and dynamism of light.
Because the festival exists to bring light to winter darkness, the typographic system demonstrates its subject instead of describing it. D&AD preserved the identity in its awards archive under Typography, and the page records no attendance figures.
Why it lands
- Letters that glow and shift focus like bokeh carry the festival's subject — light in the darkest season — without a picture of a lamp.
- One typographic identity flexes between informative, playful and lively without breaking the system.
- Depth-of-field imagery makes a static identity feel dynamic, mirroring the festival's own movement.
- Holding the first edition in January places the brand at the exact moment the festival answers.
What it did
The identity gives a midwinter festival a visual language that behaves like its subject: letters with depth-of-field glow can announce, play and celebrate inside one system. D&AD preserved the work in its awards archive under Typography; the page records no attendance figures.
What you can take
When the product is an experience, let the identity carry its core sensation: a festival about light, set in type that glows and shifts focus like bokeh, sells the feeling itself.
Since then
Glød now sits in D&AD's awards archive as a typographic identity for Stavanger's winter light festival; the page records no figures. The transferable idea is to make the brand's medium echo the experience: when an event sells light, the lettering itself should glow.
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