The visual identity for Kizomba Design Museum – a travelling platform dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of kizomba, launched during the 35th São Paulo Biennial – tries to envision something that despite feeling evocative could also feel contemporary and modern: in level with the spaces its founders want kizomba culture to occupy.

Kizomba Design Museum

Kizomba Design Museum is a travelling platform dedicated to preserving and presenting the history of kizomba, its music, its dance, its culture, and what it has meant to the communities across the Portuguese-speaking African countries and their diaspora who carry it. Its first iteration took place during the 35th São Paulo Biennial, in September 2023.

The visual identity acts as an extension of that validating, dignifying gesture, elevating the project to the level of design museums and other official cultural institutions, without the constraints those institutions carry.

It departs from two pillars: a vibrant use of colour, and the visual presence of punctuation (brackets, parentheses) as a structural and conceptual device.

Traditionally, punctuation like this adds what hasn't been said but needs to be, for context, enclosing information, adding meaning. The gesture reinforces the word “museum” in the project’s name, which stands as a claim, not a description.

Images and auxiliary information sit inside brackets and parentheses throughout – across posters, flags, brochures – giving context, adding information, making a comment. A symbolic gesture for the need to extend what gets memorialised to the more ephemeral, frequently neglected parts of culture.

The wordmark stays quiet by comparison: a compressed lowercase kdm, extending to KIZOMBA DESIGN MUSEUM in full only where the project needs to identify itself formally. Everywhere else, colour is bold and unapologetic. Photography runs through a hard duotone process, posterised into blocks of colour, its reading oscillating between pattern and photograph.

The identity extended into a website built to contextualise the project and provide access to the programme, hosting guest-curated playlists and essays, alongside print materials for the São Paulo edition, and event graphics including flags and space-marking pieces for the activation.

Client: Kizomba Design Museum (founders: Kalaf Epalanga, Nástio Mosquito)
Category: Visual Identity, Webdesign, Editorial & Print, Event Graphics
Year: 2023
Format: Logo & brand system, website, posters, event programme, playlist artwork, press materials, event graphics (flags, space-marking pieces)

Project assistant: Rita Mota