MLF Brochure Scoops Gold and Silver Design Awards

Manchester Literature Festival’s 2009 brochure has recently scooped Gold and Silver Awards in two prestigious design competitions: Fresh Creative Awards and Roses Design Awards. The bold and minimalist art work was produced by Manchester design agency Mark Studio. The design builds on the iconic new MLF branding introduced last year.

The 64 page brochure was printed on recycled newspaper – making it very environmentally friendly and economically viable, enabling us to dedicate full page attention to every event in this year’s festival. One of our guest authors, Joan Bakewell, loved the concept so much she wanted to recommend all arts organisations follow our lead. Not everyone loved the funky design as much as we did, but out and about at festival events, audiences were certainly engaging in animated discussions about the brochure and the intriguing logos gracing volunteer T-shirts, posters and banners. “Did you go to the Long Division?” was one of my favourite, overheard snippets of conversation.

This is the third year that MLF has worked with Mark Studio, and each time they’ve produced stand-out art work, helping to raise awareness of the festival within the wider zeitgeist. The 2008 new branding was featured in Design Week, and selected for inclusion in the Creative Review 2009 Annual and the industry bible, Design and Art Direction Annual 2009. The 2007 MLF brochure, which you may remember, featured photographs of people having sneaky reads in corners of the rain-washed city, was selected for inclusion in the Big Book of Brochures published by HarperCollins. We can’t wait to see what imaginative new concept they’ll come up with next year!