Leeds International Festival of Ideas 25

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 became a marker of behaviour instead of emotion, expressing curiosity through movement rather than facial expression. Its consistent form gives clarity and its shifts in colour, pace and direction create meaning. Movement becomes a language that suggests how ideas begin, gather force, collide or drift apart. In quieter applications the character appears as a lone figure, a small presence that invites reflection. In louder moments it becomes part of a full swarm that fills screens, surfaces or environments with a sense of collective 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 alive without losing clarity. It encourages people to arrive with a sense of readiness, to explore, to gather, to rethink. As another episode in the evolving story of the festival, it builds on what came before whilst helping shape an atmosphere of openness, discovery and collective curiosity that resonated strongly with audiences. LIFI25 sold out in record time and welcomed its largest audience since the festival began five years ago.