This year, Goafest returns to its roots in Goa with the innovative ‘Goafest - The Village’ and the theme ‘Ignite____’, a call to spark fresh ideas and boundary-pushing conversations.
If you’re at Goafest 2025, and find yourself staring at those animated figures and wondering, ‘Wait… is someone trying to blow this guy’s mind?’ Don't worry, you’re not alone. We wondered too. So, we decided to go straight to the source.
अब- normal Design Studio returns as the official creative partner for Goafest 2025, marking their second consecutive year at the helm of the festival’s visual identity. From shaping the overall branding to crafting immersive creative assets, the studio played a key role in defining the look, feel, and on-ground experience for attendees this year.
Ravia Ohri and Sanyaa Mehrotra, Founders of अब- normal Design Studios, explain their design process, inspiration, and how they approached creating the visual identity for India’s biggest creativity festival. With this year’s theme, ‘IGNITE__’, the team wanted attendees to feel an instant spark the moment they entered the event.
“Like their events were lighting up with creativity, possibility and play. The idea was to ignite curiosity, create a sense of urgency and evoke that irresistible ‘what if?’ in the creative designs as well,” explains Ravia Ohri, Director of अब- normal Design Studio.
The studio tapped into the comic universe as the core design language of Goafest 2025. “We blended it with the unmistakable spirit of Goa: thin palm trees, vibrant sunsets, bursts of colour, and a dash of tropical chaos,” says Sanyaa Mehrotra, Director, अब- normal Design Studio. The detailed execution of the designing of the Goafest 2025 was done by the production company Hyperlink.
अब- normal Design Studio pulled a mix of metaphors and styles with explosions, waves, lightning bolts and rockets to signal momentum and transformation in their design elements to express ideas like ignition, transformation, and collaboration.
“It was tied in the form of comic book stylisation with bold outlines and halftone textures in exaggerated motion lines. Our idea was to make it feel like a love graphic novel unfolding in real time. The elements symbolise various aspects of dynamic industry”, Ohri stated.
The studio agency faced the challenge of crafting the playful madness into a cohesive system of crafting templates, shaping physical spaces, building assets and ensuring that every touchpoint was pulsed with the same high-voltage visual energy.
In 2024, the team at अब- normal Design Studio approached the Goafest organisers with a bold new visual direction for the festival and it paid off. For the 2025 edition, the tables turned, with the Goafest team reaching out to them to lead the design once again.
