Modern European cities are increasingly becoming companies in their own right, competing with other rivals for the favor of high-tech companies, city tourists, innovative concept stores and so on. The private organization Stadtkonzept addresses all these issues on behalf of the city. It develops new concepts to revitalize the city centre, finds stores, helps with interim uses and supports local entrepreneurs in implementing new ideas. One of these measures was the “Flâneur” city festival, which enlivened the city center for an entire summer and ended with a three-day festival.

We have developed a completely new design for this event. Consisting of a font with characters and symbols as well as a defined number of colors, each participant can and should create their own appearance within the given framework. Corporate design as a concept and as an interdisciplinary system. Completely democratically organized and usable and conceivable for every medium.

Today, modern corporate images and campaigns are only successful if they can be implemented on all usable media. In line with the goal of being actively visible on all channels, we have understood the design as a more flexible system. In addition, our design is not only usable by the information provider, i.e. Flâneur, but the user himself can make the design rules his own and actively use the design.this strategy has led to the dissemination of the message functioning as a kind of snowball system.

The basis for all communication measures is the “Flâneur-Basel-Lines” font. It was made available to users via download as a font family in four weights: tiles, negative, positive and ornaments. In addition, 11 colors were specified, all of which could be used equally. Within these standards, despite creative interventions by users or participants, the common whole was always recognizable, whether it was a signage system or a food truck, a music group or a façade, the look itself became a statement and was visible as belonging to the whole.

The festival was held for the first time in 2022. The unexpected and unconventional use of media, such as streetcar signage, ship lettering, beer glass saucers, puzzles, etc., led to rapid acceptance and a great deal of attention. The number of visitors to the three-day festival, with more than 80,000 people, during which Basel’s city center was completely free of traffic, showed that “multichannel” communication can also bring success in a short space of time. As the “Flâneur” festival is also to be held in the two following years, it was decided to keep some of the advertising campaigns, such as the streetcar, bus and boat, running constantly. In a way, “Flâneur” is already part of the cityscape.