V&A Lost Music Venues Exhibition

Identity and poster design for the V&A's Lost Music Venues.

'Lost Music Venues' is the latest exhibition from the V&A, exploring the importance of grassroots and independent music spaces across the UK.

The V&A's Lost Music Venues display, developed following a public call-out for material, brings together over 100 objects - including gig posters, membership cards, club photography, band merch, and subculture fashion staples - telling the story of around 50 British venues.

The exhibition explores the role of live performance spaces in establishing the careers of some of the biggest names in British music, featuring handwritten Oasis lyrics from the tour bus, a Blur setlist from a career-defining run of performances, and Mark Webber's briefcase from his time as Pulp's tour manager.

Tracing how venues evolved from the 1980s onward, the display captures their importance as places of community and creativity, with highlights including Damon Albarn's loaned London Astoria sign and a Joan Baez sketch in support of the Rainbow Theatre. It also examines the pressures venues have faced - noise complaints, licensing laws, and the lasting impact of the Covid-19 pandemic - and highlights the charities fighting to protect grassroots spaces.

The final section celebrates the explosion of 1990s and 2000s club culture through items such as the Hacienda's exterior sign, queer night flyers, an early Banksy poster, and a Vivienne Westwood ensemble created for the legendary Kinky Gerlinky club night.

Brief

Raissa was tasked with creating a logo, poster and bespoke typography for the exhibition.

The identity needed to work across an incredibly broad range of music cultures, eras, and genres without feeling generic or defaulting to cliché visual shorthand (guitars, neon signs, etc.). It also had to feel at home within the V&A's institutional context while still carrying genuine musical energy.

Approach

The Logo & Typography

For the exhibition identity, Raissa set out to create something timeless, not anchored to any single era, scene, or genre. Rather than settling on one visual language, she deliberately wove together three different styles, letting them clash and keeping the tension visible rather than smoothing it out. That friction is where the character lives, and it's a very Raissa approach to mix styles and push further creatively.

Splitting "Lost Music Venues" across three lines gave each word its own distinct voice while keeping the overall mark balanced and legible. The result is a layered, adaptable, and open identity that reflects the energy and diversity of the venues the exhibition celebrates.

The Poster

Raissa created the official poster for the exhibition by diving straight into the technical machinery of music - amps, mics, turntables, knobs, and cables - weaving an impressive amount of wiring into a graphic exploration of sound's mechanical side. True to her practice, she approached it without a specific genre in mind, creating something that sits comfortably across all of them. Her process centred on building a bespoke grid from scratch - a method that has become a cornerstone of her work over the past few years - and then bending it to serve the needs of the piece. The result is a striking, technical, and genre-fluid image that even Raissa herself thinks is one for the house wall!