Leeds International Festival of Ideas 25

Each year we evolve the festival’s identity, shaping a new visual direction that builds on previous themes while responding to the wider cultural moods of the moment. Last year the creative centred on the emotions people experience while attending. This year we shifted our focus to what precedes that moment. We explored the curiosity that draws people in and sets ideas in motion.

We became interested in how shared curiosity brings people together around an idea, how it generates momentum when thoughts align and how it creates friction when they diverge. Exploring these dynamics led us to a visual approach centred on a single, stripped-back character. With minimal features and a consistent silhouette, individuality could only be expressed through colour, behaviour and movement.

Giving the small figures legs allowed them to follow their curiosity. They wander, gather, drift and change direction. Small groups swell into swarms. Lone figures pause, orient themselves and set off on their own path. Together these behaviours form a playful visual language that captures collective curiosity in motion.

The character consistent form creates a sense of collective identity, while changes in pace and direction add meaning. Movement becomes a language in itself, suggesting how ideas spark, gather momentum, collide, or disperse. In quieter moments, the character appears as a solitary figure—small, reflective, inviting pause. In louder applications, it expands into a full swarm, filling screens, surfaces, and environments with a shared, kinetic energy.

Across wayfinding, digital materials, stage graphics and printed communication, the identity adapts with ease. A solitary figure on a poster suggests a question waiting to emerge. A moving cluster on screen hints at a moment of shared discovery. Installations in the festival environment use the characters to create small pockets of activity that shift as visitors move through the space. The identity behaves like the ideas it represents, scaling up and down with intention and remaining open to reinterpretation.

The result is an identity that feels playful and inviting, encouraging people to arrive ready to explore, to gather and to connect. As another episode in the evolving story of the festival, the visual language builds on its ethos and helps create an atmosphere shaped by discovery and openness. The festival keeps going from strength to strength, with LIFI25 selling out in record time and attracting its largest audience in its five-year history.