Here: Best of Bad Bonn Kilbi → Bad Bonn Kilbi is an open-air music festival that has been held in Düdingen annually for the last 30 years. Over three days, the festival features experimental and noise rock, along with all kinds of avant-garde genres. The graphic designers Adeline Mollard and Katharina Reidy conceived a new visual identity for each of the twelve editions they designed, from the poster, flyers, and various gimmicks to the annual website. Over the years they have established a strong relationship with the festival and their directors. This close collaboration played a central role in the development of the practice of the two designers.
Adeline Mollard + Katharina Reidy
Graphic Design
There: Warming up → For Adeline Mollard & Katharina Reidy, the visual identity of the festival is as much a research platform as an exercise in style. For each edition they define a concept and a key narrative. While some ideas were materialised through a happening, as in 2008 where the flyer was baked live as a traditional “Brätzele”, a sweet flat cookie, other editions explored various aspects of music culture, such as fandom (2006), music genres (2009) and digitalisation (2018). The designs would always proceed from the concept and would become as challenging and surprising as the festival programme itself.
Over the course of 30 years, things have changed. The festival’s international popularity and the rise of digital media have made the online presence central to its communication. For a few years now, the two designers have also conceived and designed the website, always in an experimental spirit, viewing it as a jukebox warming up for the festival. The visual concept and language developed for the digital presence are often used as starting point for the printed matters.
Over the course of 30 years, things have changed. The festival’s international popularity and the rise of digital media have made the online presence central to its communication. For a few years now, the two designers have also conceived and designed the website, always in an experimental spirit, viewing it as a jukebox warming up for the festival. The visual concept and language developed for the digital presence are often used as starting point for the printed matters.
Everywhere → Both Adeline Mollard and Katharina Reidy work as independent graphic designers. Adeline, based in Zurich, has worked for the publishing houses Edition Patrick Frey, Sternberg Press, and Scheidegger & Spiess. She has worked on commissions for the ETH Zurich, the Musée cantonal des Beaux Arts Lausanne MCBA, contemporary dance theatre Théâtre Sévelin 36, and the Berlin handmade eyewear maker MYKITA. In 2009 she left for Berlin on the artist residency programme of the Canton de Fribourg, where she lived until 2017. Supported by an IKEA scholarship, she enrolled in 2010 on the MFA in Design Criticism course at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Based in Bern, Katharina Reidy has been working under the name Coboi since 2007. Her clients include Fri-Art, the University of the Arts Bern, the Berner Design Stiftung and the publishing house Kehrer Verlag. She is co-editor of Progrzines, published by the cultural hub Progr. Since 2016 she has also designed the political magazine Polis. Together they designed and edited the Bad Bonn Song Book published in 2016 by Edition Patrick Frey and nominated for the Swiss Design Awards in 2017.
Adeline Mollard + Katharina Reidy → (both *1982), Based in Zurich and Bern, www.adelinemollard.ch, www.katharinareidy.ch
Education → Adeline Mollard: MA in Art History and Cinema Studies, Zurich University; BA in Visual Communication, écal, Lausanne, Katharina Reidy: BA in Visual Communication, HKB, Bern
Project(s) → Best of Bad Bonn Kilbi, 2005–2009, 2014–2020