21/05/2026
Last weekend we once again celebrated the best free festival in the world, Yläkaupungin Yö, and luckily I got to create this year’s visual identity for the festival too.
The theme this year was solace — kind of a response to all the bleak and anxiety-inducing things happening in the world right now. My first thought about solace was that in hopeless situations, the best thing is to surround yourself with everything soft and cute, and that’s how the first version of the visuals was born. (Second slide)
I did get comments that the bunny and cat characters looked a bit too much like Labubu, and once it was pointed out I totally saw the resemblance too (also felt incredibly old because in my head the reference point was more like Care Bears from the 80s lol).
In the second version — which eventually became the official look for this year (first slide)— I approached solace from a different angle: that warmth and sadness can exist at the same time, and that even in the middle of grief and uncertainty, there can still be connection, hope, and something worth holding onto.
I wanted to post both versions because I genuinely love them equally, and it would feel sad if the first one just stayed hidden somewhere in the depths of my computer forever🌷🌷
