Poster
The poster for the 2025 edition of the 42 Festival draws inspiration from Barcelona’s artistic roots, combining them with the fantastic worlds represented at the 42 Festival through one of this year’s main themes: Catalan mythological creatures. In doing so, illustrator Marina Vidal brings together the Catalan fantastic tradition of mythological beasts and Barcelona’s cultural and artistic evolution. Her beasts represent various creatures from fantastic mythology and traditional Catalan horror such as dones d’aigua [water women], El Bocarrot [a goat-like genie] and La Pesanta [a creature that sneaks up on sleeping victims to give them nightmares], but she also incorporates science fiction imagery such as spaceships, robots and space creatures.
The beasts were designed in the style of Barcelona’s iconic panot paving tiles as a way to bring together the different artistic movements, such as the modernisme and Gothic styles, that are part of the city’s history and soul. These beasts from fantastic genres, together with the name of the festival, are part of the identity that connects the festival to the history of both Barcelona and Catalonia as a whole. The colour scheme seeks to update Barcelona’s modernista and Gothic legacy with contrasting shades that also continue and build on the themes of previous editions of the festival, which is developing an evolving visual identity of its own year after year. Similarly, the typeface used for the 42 imitates a medieval aesthetic typical of the “books of beasts” of the past, but combines with less ornate fonts to create a dialogue between time, space and different genres.
Marina Vidal, born in Sabadell in 1993, is an illustrator who studied comic book art and specialises in designing and creating fantasy, horror and science fiction covers. She has created illustrations for some of the greats of the genre, such as Barbara Hambly, Kameron Hurley, Lois McMaster Bujold and T. Kingfisher, and is currently helping to bring Terry Pratchett’s works to life in Catalan-language editions. Vidal is also the artistic director of Brandon Sanderson’s fantasy universe for the Mai Més and Duna Llibres publishing houses.
