Located in Lisbon, Cossoul (Sociedade de Instrução Guilherme Cossoul) is a private institution of public benefit, founded on September 7, 1885, by 47 music amateurs and admirers of Guilherme Cossoul, a 19th century Portuguese composer, cellist and founder of the volunteer firefighters in Lisbon. The institution soon expanded his activity to other areas of social and artistic intervention, having played a driving role in modern Portuguese theater.

Cossoul’s current scope of action includes theatre, literature, visual arts, music, cinema, education and social integration through the arts, fostering various initiatives for all age groups. It hosts an independent publisher, Artefacto, a youth community wind band, Banda Juvenil Guilherme Cossoul, and an art gallery with the project ” balloon — production, dialog, and participation”. It also has a radio – Voz Online, a bookstore and a bar, all of which complement and support its various cultural activities.

To celebrate their 138th anniversary, I was commissioned with the rebranding of the institution, shaping a new visual language to provide the basis to a revamped communication, in both digital and print mediums.

The starting point for Cossoul’s new visual identity consisted in the conceptual and abstract interpretation of ​​an audience. What is an audience, and how is it formed? This materialization resulted in the filling of empty spaces by textures of different shapes and colors, symbolizing different groups of people with different personalities, who comes together in a space to watch a cultural event.

The malleability and materiality of the resulting visual communication provides an infinite number of formal combinations that meet the diversity of audiences and cultural offerings that regularly inhabit the space of this century-old society.