After I first noticed the stone typography for Worldwide Meeting‘s 2025 identification, I needed to look twice. These large, pockmarked letterforms appear like historic ruins, all cratered surfaces and eroded edges. The letters push proper up in opposition to abstraction, dissolving into sculptural types. And let’s be sincere: ‘readability’ has not been the highest precedence right here.
NAM (aka Nam Huynh and Mark Bohle) and Warriors Studio have created one thing genuinely thought-provoking right here. This identification makes use of barely readable stone typography as its central aspect, pairing it with crisp subtitles in Neue Haas Grotesk, which sit neatly beneath. It is playful, barely absurd, and utterly thought-about.
Operate is not what you suppose it’s
This is the factor that makes this work so properly for a design pageant. We spend our total careers being informed what “purposeful” design seems to be like: highway indicators, tutorial diagrams, reductive symbols, minimalism. However what occurs when the perform of your design is to excite individuals and intrigue them? When your job is to make creatives cease and suppose?
And that is the place this identification will get intelligent. For an viewers of designers attending a pageant, creating one thing unfamiliar and boundary-pushing is definitely extra profitable as “purposeful” design than taking part in it secure. You’ve got received license to query conventions whenever you’re talking to your friends.
Be aware, too, that the stone types themselves are correctly crafted. This is not only a texture slapped onto some letters. NAM began by laying out typography in 2D, then extruded it into 3D meshes, and imported all the things into VR. They then used a digital ice-cream scoop to carve out every letter by hand. You may see the handmade high quality within the irregular surfaces and the best way mild catches the carved-out sections. It is digital craft at its finest.
Why subtitles change all the things
The subtitle system, in the meantime, is what transforms this from an experiment right into a working identification. The clear strains of Neue Haas Grotesk, positioned beneath the closely textured stone headlines, create a rigidity that propels the entire design ahead.
To my thoughts, this rigidity between opacity and readability neatly mirrors the place design sits as we speak. We’re consistently negotiating between pushing boundaries and making issues work; between experimentation and readability; between what we need to do and what we have to do.
NAM additionally introduced in FK Raster by Florian Karsten, which they describe as including “some crunchy popcorn style” alongside the heavy stone and clear Grotesk. It is a good third voice that stops the two-font system from feeling too binary.
The cinematic reference issues too. Movie subtitles create precisely this type of rigidity; experimentation sits proper subsequent to performance. That magical feeling of watching one thing unfold in a darkened cinema connects completely to the pageant expertise. The whole lot sits on wealthy black backgrounds, creating a way of anticipation and ready for one thing particular to start.
What designers can be taught from this
The plain takeaway from this challenge is “push the boundaries for artistic audiences”. However there’s additionally a broader lesson right here: that performance shifts relying on what you are really attempting to attain. And typically questioning conventions serves your function higher than following them.
For those who’re designing for a pageant talking on to designers, you have received permission to push additional than you’d for different contexts. The viewers is completely different. Their expectations are completely different. What counts as “working” is completely different. Warriors and NAM needed to make use of the pageant as a platform to query their each day actions and critique expectations round performance.
This does not imply, in fact, that hardly readable typography is all of a sudden acceptable in all places. It means considering more durable about what your design really must do.
If it must excite and intrigue reasonably than merely inform, if it is talking to an viewers who values being challenged, then possibly that daring, textured remedy is definitely essentially the most purposeful selection you could possibly make.
Why it labored
The collaboration between NAM and Warriors labored so properly, partly due to their shared historical past. They’ve exhibited collectively, run workshops collectively, and travelled collectively. NAM has been visiting the pageant for years, absorbing its ambiance. That deep understanding of the occasion’s vitality meant they might seize one thing genuine. Warriors describe it as NAM bringing out “the vitality and vibe of the pageant higher than we ever may”.
The result’s an identification that questions conventions whereas nonetheless doing its job brilliantly.
Info stays utterly accessible by the subtitle system. The stone typography creates affect and memorability. The summary symbols (a globe for worldwide scope, coordinate methods for design’s place in society) add conceptual depth. Even the web page numbers within the Worldwide Poster Ebook be part of the parade, marching from nook to nook throughout 260 pages, increasing and contracting like respiration creatures.
It is a reminder that critique and performance can coexist. That you would be able to push boundaries and nonetheless talk clearly. And most significantly, that “purposeful” design is not one factor – it is no matter efficiently achieves your precise objective.
And the occasion itself? Worldwide Meeting runs from 6–21 November 2025 in Glasgow. The convention itself occurs on at some point within the Royal Live performance Corridor – doorways open at 8am, and talks run from 9:30 am to 6pm. There will not be any recordings, by the best way, so you have to be there. Given this identification’s emphasis on expertise and questioning, this feels completely acceptable. Some issues demand your full consideration.
