Landscapes and Portraits of BCBF

To mark its 60th edition, BCBF launched an international illustration contest open exclusively to those artists selected for the Illustrators Exhibition over the last decade. Using only the four colours of the BCBF logo, illustrators were asked to produce an illustration focused on a memory of their visits to Bologna. The jury comprised the ten great artists selected to create the covers of the last ten years’ Illustrators Annuals.

This stellar jury  - made up of the illustrators who had produced the covers of the Illustrators Annuals over the last deccade—Elena Odriozola, Albertine, Hasssan Mousavi, Igor Oleynikov, Ludwig Volbeda, Rotraut Susanne Berner, Laura Carlin, Roger Mello, It’s Raining Elephants/Nina Wehrle, Peter Sís, selected these 20 illustrations that best describe the atmosphere, people, places and magic of Bologna and the Fair.

Chialab design studio, curator of the BCBF visual identity, decided to take a risk and break with the tradition that demanded the visual identity be created from a single illustrator with its own particular style and identity.

The colours guided the team, showing them how they could seamlessly juxtapose, assemble, overlap and multiply the 20 illustrations on show at the Services Centre.

Gradually, they wove them all together, cutting out and assembling extracts and details. The result was new scenarios, new characters and new environments that together spoke of the many individual talents that made up the whole: a concert with 20 musicians playing a 4-colour score. What better image for this year’s slogan “Still rocking at 60!”.