The Edinburgh International Book Festival is the largest festival of its kind in the world – a meeting of minds welcoming novelists, poets, scientists, philosophers, economists, Nobel and Booker prize-winners and many more besides.

Tangent has a long-running relationship with the festival that reaches back over ten years, developing a unique promotional campaign each year based on the director’s vision and annual theme.

The 2018 Book Festival was based around ideas of freedom. To represent this a series of images were developed using everyday objects rendered in glass. The objects become a lens through which patterns warp and distort, illustrating the subjectivity of freedom as a concept.

The Book Festival theme in 2016 was ‘Imagine Better’. Initial conversations with the festival team about shaping the future, visionary thinking and shared imagination brought to mind the period of interest in the 60’s and early 70’s of Psychedelia and psychedelic art, where complex subject matter was brilliantly simplified into bright, playful visuals. The vivid and contemporary style of US/UK illustration team Craig & Karl was a perfect fit for the campaign.

“We have worked with Tangent for the last ten years, making our relationship the longest in the event’s history. Each year Tangent bring fresh ideas to reinvigorate the festival’s visual identity and have contributed immensely to our performance and growing international stature.”
Edinburgh International Book Festival