What language does The Hague speak?

Eighteen residents of The Hague, each with a mother tongue other than Dutch, shared a self-chosen or self-written text during The Longest Night at the Central Library, presenting it in both their native language and Dutch. For this occasion, we were commissioned by Spraakmakend and Stemkracht to design a book bundling all these texts.

Because the event took place on the longest night of the year, we chose to base the design on the theme of day and night. The cover features the moon in the phase it was in on that evening. To highlight the distinctive sounds of the different languages, we styled the vowels in a contrasting color.

In the layout we used only gold and a deep, vibrant blue. These colors symbolize the contrast between day and night, as well as between the mother tongues and Dutch.

We paid special attention to the distinct features of non-Western languages like Bengali, Chinese, Armenian, and Dari-Arabic, crafting typography that blends harmony with visual consistency.