The Ricciotti Ensemble is a street symphony orchestra of 41 talented musicians. Their trademark is to bring music to unconventional spaces and for people who don’t have easy access to it. Their concerts locations include unusual scenarios such as hospitals, hospices, prisions, parks, streets, beaches, trains, airplanes, ships, swimming pools, mountain tops, rainforests, you name it. The group started back in 1970 and comes from the same anti-establishment philosophical wave of Dutch & European movements of the 60’s, that renewed the artistic and political landscape of The Netherlands. The organization has since evolved both musically and professionally, to become one of Holland’s best known semi-professional orchestras. The orchestra is also a platform for many talented young musicians and actively works in educational music programs.
The name Ricciotti makes reference to the first music sheet the orchestra played, written by an Italian-Dutch composer named Carlo Ricciotti, but the historical origin of this Surname derives from the italian word «riccio» —«curl» in English—, most likely referring to someone with curly hair.
The graphic identity was largely based on the use of Lineto’s «Circular Std», a geometric contemporary typeface by swiss designer Laurenz Brunner with a modernist, rigorous but warm and idiosyncratic character. The simplicity of this starting point is then dynamized by subtle but constant and unexpected elements: colour schemes that change all the time throughout the stationery, titles set in unusually big bold sizes, and a set of several different spiral images —a reference to the curls and to the Dutch term «springplank», a trampoline or diving board, which is what Ricciotti represents for many young musicians—, that rather than behaving like a conventional logo, pop-up, change, adapt, surprise, just as Ricciotti does.
