u:topia critical club

2019, concept development, visual identity design

U:topia represents a visual identity created for the concept design of the critical underground nightclub.

The project came into existence during my postgraduate studies of Communication Design: Graphic Design at Kingston School of Art. U:topia was designed particularly in fulfilment of the Designing Research module, where the brief required the application of the re-use method when producing designs.

Hackney City Farm, which I visited before the development stage of the project together with the module leader, became the primary information source for its realisation. After conducting empirical research at the location, the concept of “paradise” in the urban jungle became apparent. The expanded theoretical research had further confirmed the similarities with Thomas Moore’s conceptualisation of Utopia, and ended up being subsequently used to frame the project theoretically and develop an appropriate design strategy.

U:topia was then defined as a concept of an independent underground nightclub based at Hackney City Farm’s Frizzante Café, focused on providing accessible alternative forms of education on current social issues, of a political and environmental character mostly, to the adults of different social, occupational and cultural backgrounds.

The character of the nightclub and the concept of Moore’s Utopia (the element of the planet) then came to be incorporated within the visual identity of U:topia through the implementation of bold graphic elements, digitally edited photographs of the Hackney City Farm, contrasting colours and typographic choices. Similarly, the floor plan of the Frizzante Café, used as a visual reference for the logo design, together with Moore’s theory, ended up being visually translated to the animated and screen-printed posters, a postcard pack, and an introductory zine created to promote the critical nightclub.