Birmingham Design Festival (BDF) is an annual event based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the best in design. Launched in 2018, the festival brings together designers, artists, and creatives from various disciplines including graphic design, digital design, illustration, architecture, motion design, and product design. The event is organized by a group of design professionals who are passionate about fostering creativity and community engagement within the design industry.
Birmingham, a city with deep industrial and design roots, serves as the perfect backdrop for a festival that aims to blend traditional craftsmanship with modern innovation. Since its inception, BDF has grown in scale and influence, attracting both local and international talent and audiences.
The Birmingham Design Festival logo has remained consistent in its visual identity since the early years of the festival. Its design is focused on clarity, boldness, and adaptability. Rather than going through multiple redesigns, the logo’s evolution is more about how it is applied across various media and themes each year, rather than a complete transformation. This approach supports strong brand recognition while allowing for flexible, creative interpretations within the festival’s branding materials.
The logo features a bold, geometric sans-serif typeface with clean lines and uniform spacing. The type is uppercase, which conveys authority and presence while remaining approachable due to its rounded, contemporary styling. The alignment is left-justified, providing a solid structural balance and easy readability across various formats and sizes.
Above the main textual part of the logo, three emblem-style shapes are used. These include:
A shield shape with an anchor icon, potentially symbolizing strength, grounding, and connection—traits essential to the design community.
Two overlapping circles that contain the abbreviation “BHAM” (a common short form of Birmingham), representing unity and intersection.
Another shield-like shape with “DSGN FEST” in it, reinforcing the festival theme while playing with minimal typography.
These icons add a visual rhythm and serve as modular elements that can be used individually or in combination for branding purposes across merchandise, signage, and digital platforms.
The logo is executed in solid black on a white background, making it highly versatile and timeless. This monochromatic palette ensures maximum contrast, which enhances readability and impact. Additionally, it allows for the logo to be easily reversed or adapted into various color palettes depending on the year’s festival theme.
This is a combination mark, as it includes both iconographic symbols and textual elements. The combination style ensures that the logo is both descriptive and symbolic, making it memorable and easily recognizable.
The overall shape of the logo is rectangular due to the stacked typography. The inclusion of the circular and shield shapes at the top breaks the linearity and adds visual interest. The layout is modular, meaning elements can be rearranged without losing the essence of the brand—perfect for a festival that often adapts its visual identity annually while retaining brand coherence.
The logo’s strong typographic foundation and flexible icon set make it suitable for a wide range of applications, from digital screens to printed materials. It can easily be scaled up for banners or reduced for social media avatars without losing its clarity or impact. Each year, the design system allows for thematic variation while keeping the core identity intact.
The Birmingham Design Festival logo can be downloaded for free in vector formats such as SVG, PDF, and AI, as well as transparent PNG from logowik.com. These formats ensure high-quality usage across both digital and print platforms.