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Brand guide

A website or app

The whole design system of the website: all its components, colours and states.

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What the Potamia carnival is

The carnival of a village on Thassos, run by the villagers themselves — not by a council, not by a company.

Every winter the village's groups build floats and write satirical sketches — about current affairs and politics, about local Thassos affairs, sometimes about history or the twelve gods — and take to the square on the last Sunday of carnival. It is organised by the «Dionysos» cultural association. It is not staged for tourists: it is a village making fun of itself — but anyone who turns up is in it.

The custom is far older than the parade. There is no precise historical record, only stories handed down from our grandparents' great-grandparents — the «camel» custom, which we recently revived, and the men who went out at night dressed as animals and walked into the cafés. It is Dionysian, which is why the association took the name «Dionysos»: we celebrate wine, dance, revelry, eros and the phallic symbols that go with them. Some may find that shocking — for these days of the year there is no shame in it.

The float parade in its present form began in 1987. The association digitises and catalogues whatever survives — parades, floats, songs, photographs — and the archive is still growing. 25 of the 36 years have a video of the parade; the rest do not, and we say so openly.

Preparation starts just after Christmas and runs two to three months: the association's members and dozens of village volunteers build the floats. The events open with Triodion, and the parade falls in February or March depending on the year. Afterwards the square becomes a party, with wine and food for everyone. All of it is volunteer work, backed by every business in the village.

Where
Potamia, Thassos
The parade
14 March 2027
Who
«Dionysos» Cultural Association
Parade since
1987
Digital archive
Ongoing
The 2027 carnival's logo. Redrawn every year.

“The Potamia Carnival is the carnival of the village of Potamia on Thassos: a Dionysian custom many generations old, whose satirical float parade has taken its present form since 1987, organised by the «Dionysos» Folklore and Cultural Association through the volunteer work of its residents.”

This sentence may be used verbatim in an article, press release or video description without asking us.

Two voices, one identity

Our identity has two voices. The “DIONYSOS” association speaks all year round: calm, clear, on white. The carnival speaks for one celebration: loud, nocturnal, on purple. The two voices never mix. Before you design anything, decide who is speaking.

«DIONYSOS» Folklore & Cultural Association of Potamia — Potamia, Thassos.

Καρναβάλι Ποταμιάς

Notices, news, forms — the association's everyday voice.

The association's voice — the light theme

White and off-white surfaces, plenty of ΚΡΑΣΙ in buttons and links, and a hint of purple hidden in the dark text. A serious slab-serif face. This is what announcements, news, forms and admin look like.

Potamia · Thassos

Carnival

The celebration, the floats, every year's archive.

The carnival's voice — the dark theme

Purple surfaces, white text, ΚΡΑΣΙ on the buttons, and the year's detail colour glowing in headlines and touches. Uppercase, heavy, festive type. This is what the celebration's pages look like.

How the carnival talks

Four rules that are often forgotten.

WriteNotWhy
Ποταμιά, ΘάσοςPotamia Carnival FestivalGreek is the language of the celebration. English goes beside it, never instead of it.
the floats, the παρέεςthe teams' floatsThey are παρέες — groups of friends, not teams. That is what the village calls them.
Come to the squareDon't miss it!!!The carnival does not need exclamation marks. It invites; it does not advertise.
the «Dionysos» associationthe organising committeeIt has a name and it is a members' association. Use it.

The carnival is «Καρναβάλι Ποταμιάς» and the association is «Διόνυσος». They are two different things, and only the second one organises anything.

The colour recipe

No designer's eye needed — just proportions. If a page or poster keeps roughly these ratios, it will look like ours.

Association (light)

75%15%10%
  • 75% — White / off-white surfaces
  • 15% — ΚΡΑΣΙ — buttons, links, highlights
  • 10% — Near-black ΝΙΟΝΙΟΣ — text & rules

Carnival (dark)

65%20%10%5%
  • 65% — ΝΙΟΝΙΟΣ — surfaces
  • 20% — ΚΡΑΣΙ — buttons & details
  • 10% — Detail colour — headlines & touches
  • 5% — White — text

How much of each colour

The colours are not used in equal amounts. With these proportions, a poster, a post and a web page all look like the same carnival.

Tap here28 Feb

Red is the action — the screen's one button and the date box. Lime (the year's colour) is the fact that shouts: a date, a number, a year. If lime is tappable or red merely informs, somebody will confuse the two.

nionios-30065%
The background. One colour taking up almost all the space is what makes the identity recognisable from a distance.
stachti-10015%
The lettering and the logo. Always the easiest thing to read on the surface.
rave-10012%
The year's detail colour: the «’27», a link, a highlight. A little — just enough to be seen.
krasi-2008%
One thing per surface that you want to stand out, on a red plaque with white lettering. Never red lettering on purple.

Rough proportions, not a rule to measure. If the detail colour starts to look like the background, it has taken too much space.