Islamabad Literature Festival

Exhibition Collateral design

Islamabad
literature
festival

A print and digital identity for 12 Pakistani artists at ILF 2023

The Brand

Twelve artists. One institution. Two weeks to make it legible.

IAPEX, IAP’s BNU MDSVAD curated “The Day After” for the 9th Islamabad Literature Festival — a visual art exhibition of 12 Pakistani artists at F9 Park Art Gallery, Islamabad, 3-5 November 2023, under the ILF theme People, Planet, Possibilities.

The commission was five deliverables, designed remotely, in two weeks. The brief gave assets. Every decision about what to do with them was made independently — from the choice of hero artwork to the typographic treatment of the title.

Creative Approach

Fatima Hussain’s work was already
a poster.

Twelve artists submitted work. Most of it was intimate, detail-dependent, or installation-based — powerful in a gallery at close range, but visually silent on a standee in an open park. Fatima Hussain’s surrealist ink forms were monumental. The design decision was to get out of the way.

Making “THE DAY” typographically hollow and “AFTER” solid was not a stylistic choice. The event itself rendered as outline. Its aftermath as weight. What came before is fading. What remains is present and heavy.

I help institutional and growth-stage companies build brand systems that close the gap between what they deliver and how they’re perceived.