Ten years since it began, Sonar is the leading European festival dedicated to “electronic culture”, the most innovative, open and international. The only thing that isn’t digital? Its graphic design. Text by Elena Sommariva.

Sonar has celebrated its tenth birthday. With over three hundred concerts and events in every form of multimedia, the three days in Barcelona (with a record number of 90 000 participants made all the more special by the cutting edge performances of Björk and the Matthew Herbert Big Band) have become an established meeting place for anyone who has anything to do with contemporary avant-garde electronic music.

At first glance, there are at least three things that make this event a transversal appointment, not just about music and generally something special. The first of these is the location - Barcelona, a city that is attentive and receptive to cultural stimuli of all kinds, including less institutional ones. The second is the places used to host the daytime events – not a marquee or a stadium or even a club but the Contemporary Culture Centre (CCCCB) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA). Those visiting the festival not only find themselves right in the centre of the city but inside two of the major cultural spaces of the Catalan capital.

Finally the graphic identity, the only element – and not by chance – non electronic. “It was born out of an attempt to find an image that didn’t have such strong associations with rave culture and which distinguishes itself from the usual things imposed by the iconography of techno and house music” explains Sergio Caballero, co director of Advanced Music, the company that has been organising Sonar since 1994. “So we eliminated any reference to digitalised images which are in any case much abused at an international level”. A choice that has paid off in the long term, standing out as one of the most successful and courageous international graphic adventures of recent years. “The images are so realistic that they make you think that there is a story behind them”, states Caballero. “The campaigns are that much more anti fashion, they make you think that they come from some kind of folklore that refers back to Spanish roots and then ends up becoming trendy”.

Starting with the third edition (in 1996), Sonar left behind the coldness of computerised graphics and adopted as its “corporate identity” the “Blow” inflatable chair by Zanotta (designed in 1967 by De Pas, D’Urbino and Lomazzi). It was a sort of strong reference to the then emerging chill out phenomenon. From then on, the approach became increasingly humanised and ironic, in contrast with the event that had acquired increasing visibility in Europe, where the digital triumphs in all forms of expression: music, art and video. Those which followed are bizarre testimonials: a family of six roaming the desert, Brazilian ballerinas at a carnival, an embalmed Alsatian mounted on a trolley, a pair of rather unnerving twins with paranormal powers, an irreverent Catalan family album and last year, exploiting the fact that it coincided with the world cup in Japan, the unique and controversial Argentinean, Diego Armando Maradona, photographed in his “buen retiro” in Cuba.

This year, concentrated on the tenth anniversary, the organisers opted for a more sober image: pictures of all the staff – from the lawyer to press officer, marketing staff to creative director – without eyeballs and a poster that is instead made of just eyes. All accompanied by a photo album that celebrates the anniversary (published by Actar), A dutiful homage to its roots and to the artists and organisers that have contributed to make it the leading European festival dedicated to “electronic culture”, the most innovative, open and international.