Background

An art fair is more than just an exhibition, place where attendees can actually purchase works of art for themselves. For artKYOTO’s debut, we needed to create an impactful method of branding that would help draw VIPs who frequent major international art fairs such as Art Basel and TEFAF all the way to Kyoto.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

Purchasing and owning art is one of experiences that can’t be done digitally. This value of actual physical experience of things is growing rapidly in a world where we can see anything and everything on the web. For artKYOTO, a new art fair held in Kyoto, our idea was to create a visual identity that was physically tangible and couldn’t be reduced into an .ai file (data for Adobe Illustrator).

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

We used origami, a traditional Japanese craft made with a single sheet of square paper, which matches the spirit of Kyoto, to create a form for artKYOTO, functioning both as simple abstract art and minimalist sculpture. The VI featured the letters A and K from artKYOTO. We also used the form for physical advertising, utilizing special large origami paper to create hand-folded posters and invitation letters for VIPs, the most important promotional tool for an art fair. The lines created by the gaps in the paper, not by printing ink, gave shape to the art fair’s new logo mark.

List the results (20% of vote)

Through this new VI, we succeeded in giving the 3,000 VIPs who received invitations a tangible experience similar to that of holding art in their own hands. As a result, roughly 10,000 people attended, including a large number of VIPs. In addition, art sales totaled 500 million yen. Thus, we successfully launched artKYOTO unlike any other art fair.