Visual identity and art direction · 2024
Tracon 2024
A medieval fantasy identity that turned practical event materials into part of Tracon's world
I served as Tracon's art director from 2023 to 2025, guiding the visual identity of one of Finland's largest pop culture conventions. For 2024, the annual Light and Shadow theme coincided with a collaboration with Tampere Theatre's Lord of the Rings production and the launch of Tracon by Night, a new evening and night programme block designed to continue beyond that year's theme. It remains part of the event today.
I developed an identity that brought medieval fantasy into the event while remaining practical for thousands of attendees. During my tenure, Tracon was named the City of Tampere's Cultural Event of the Year 2025, selected from more than 400 candidates.
Fantasy made functional
An event identity has to work under pressure. Maps, badges, wristbands, tickets and programme guides must remain readable and immediately recognisable, even when thousands of people are moving through the venue.
Tracon adopts a new visual identity for each annual theme. In 2024, the challenge was to make Light and Shadow and the Lord of the Rings collaboration visible throughout the event without allowing ornament to interfere with navigation or essential information.
Light, shadow and material
The identity begins in the logo. I transformed the O into both the One Ring and a sun, shaped the C into a crescent moon, and placed stars throughout the negative space. Together, the forms connect the Light and Shadow theme with the event's new day and night structure.
Tactility and historical reference were central to the wider identity. I set and directed the visual research, drawing from nineteenth-century books and magazines, medieval illustration, historic book covers and decorative spines, alongside Tolkien's work. The wristbands and staff badges draw especially from book-spine ornament through framed compositions, repeated motifs and copper details.
Forest green, tweed, copper and parchment carry that language across the event. Woven wristbands replaced printed ones, while the programme used warm, yellowed textured paper. These choices helped practical, mass-produced objects feel authentic to the same imagined world. Tracon by Night extended the materials and symbols into a darker digital treatment, creating a distinct late-night atmosphere without separating it from the main event.
The object studies present designs that were produced for the event in art-directed digital compositions. I built and refined their settings, textures and lighting to carry the identity’s atmosphere beyond the objects themselves.
