Peer Gynt Display

The acclaimed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote his main work, the dramatic play Peer Gynt, in 1867. The play has been celebrated with an annual festival since 1967. Today, the festival is recognized by the government as a leading cultural institution, with a broad program of theatre, concerts, exhibitions and literature seminars. The festival’s main event is a spectacular outdoor theater production, set on a mountain lake. Since the play is staged in Peer Gynt’s birthplace, where Ibsen claims he found his inspiration for the play, it is often regarded to be the most authentic version. Peer Gynt has been described as the national story of Norway. As a result, a wide variety of norwegian brands take use of the iconic Peer Gynt-name and depicts Peer's buckride from the play’s opening scene. The festival had to differentiate from this visual landscape, appear contemporary and experimental but also re-establish their unique position as the true guardians of the Peer Gynt-heritage. We chose to explore the same source of inspiration that Ibsen used as his reference when writing the play: The Per Gynt Farm, which is the actual place where the real Per once lived. The custom typeface is inspired by the traditional “laft” building technique used at the farm, a distinct wood-construction practice used predominantly in the region and time when the original Per Gynt lived in Gålå. The typeface is an essential component of the design system, it aims to reflect a marriage between the contemporary and traditional, which is exactly what the attendants experience at the festival. Acting as the centerpiece of the visual identity, the layout grid is defined by the typefaces characters and the gutter by its letter spacing.