Solid & Bold wins the European Design Award 2026 in Silver!

Bulgaria, Sofia on the13th of June 2026

Solid & Bold has won silver in the »Brand Logo« category at the European Design Awards 2026 and is among the winners of this prestigious Europe-wide design award. The project, commissioned by »Schauspielhaus Salzburg«, received the award.

Das »Schauspielhaus Salzburg« is Austria’s largest mid-sized theatre. A place of discovery: a multi-layered space where insights, encounters and stories emerge, one after another. It’s where we shift perspective and test what we think we know – where we ask whether things are really as they appear. In the middle of a digital ocean, theatre remains an analogue, live experience that speaks to all the senses. A place to engage with life’s big questions – and, along the way, with ourselves.

That idea sits at the heart of the new logo. It invites you to look twice and see differently. As you read the word »SCHAUSPIEL« (means acting), the word »HAUS« (means house or building)” comes into view. The name »SCHAUSPIELHAUS« completes itself in your mind – without ever needing to be spelled out. Something that was hidden a moment ago becomes clear, much like the meaning of a performance often only reveals itself after you’ve left the auditorium.

A second idea comes from the way a stage set works: individual parts only come together as a convincing whole from the audience’s viewpoint. By repeating and shifting the word »HAUS« in the logotype, new shapes appear – simple geometric forms that feel at once like typographic glyphs and cipher-like symbols. These shapes become the visual language of the design and run through the entire identity. Clear and bold in their basics, they can still be split, recombined and rearranged – again and again.

With vivid colours and changing layers, the new design expresses the theatre’s range and energy. It signals the beginning of a new chapter under new artistic leadership: a theatre that doesn’t speak only to long-time theatregoers and doesn’t chase a younger audience either. Instead, it brings people together – because it welcomes everyone, in all their differences.

Further information on the project can be found on the European Design Award Website.

Credits
Creative Director: Serge Ritter-Höntzsch
Art Director: Dominik Langegger
Designer: Ricardo Gantschnigg
Motion Designer: Matthias De Cillia

Since 2007, the European Design Awards have been recognising and promoting outstanding communication design from across Europe. Every year, the awards bring together publishers, journalists, editors and academics to evaluate and honour the finest examples of outstanding design on the European continent.

The European Design Awards recognise work across a broad spectrum of disciplines, including branding, packaging design, advertising, publications, typography, illustration, digital applications, independent and special projects, as well as spatial and context-based design applications.

More about the European Design Award.

With an independent, editorially-led jury and a strong focus on European design culture, the Awards serve as a platform to recognise and document communication design in Europe and to raise its standards. All finalists and award-winning entries are published in the European Design Awards catalogue and featured on the official European Design Awards website.

Find out more about all the winners.

Photo credits: Mihail Novakov / European Design Festival 2026