The identity for Flow Festival builds on the idea of the festival crowd as an urban tribe, united by a metaphorical mantra of a visual wordplay set in the bespoke Flow-typeface influenced by contemporary central European trends of postmodern craftsmanship. Together with the amulet-like illustrations of Santtu Mustonen, the repetition of letters and images resembles the rhythm of music and creates the core visual language and imagery for the project. This arrangement of elements was used across all media platforms, from web and print to motion graphics, and from venue signage to office stationery.

Illustrator Santtu Mustonen, digital agency Byroo, production company Beige/Harmaa and musician Matti Pentikäinen worked as Tsto’s key collaborators on the project.

The World Design Capital is a city promotion project celebrating the merits of design. Held biennially, it seeks to highlight the accomplishments of cities that are truly leveraging design as a tool to improve their social, cultural and economic climate throughout a yearlong programme of design-related events. In the beginning of 2009, Kokoro & Moi was chosen to design The World Design Capital 2012 application for the city of Helsinki, taking their home city to the finals together with the city of Eindhoven in a competition with 46 cities applying to. From the final duo, Helsinki was designated as the World Design Capital 2012 at the Icsid World Design Congress in Singapore, November 2009. After successful work in the application phase, Kokoro & Moi is continuing the project with the city of Helsinki and developing an open identity concept and communication design for the year 2012.