Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI)HERE. NOW. IN THE STREETS.

Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) is a borderless collective of the world’s leading designers, gathering each year to exchange ideas, challenge perspectives, discuss the evolution of the discipline, and engage with local creative communities. In 2025, for the first time, AGI lands in Southeast Asia for its annual Congress and conference, AGI Open. A new geography, a new energy, a new point of view. Hosted in Ho Chi Minh City by AGI members and BaseSGN partners Joshua Breidenbach and Chí-An De Leo, the event marks a shift, not just in location, but in lens.

How do you design for a place so often reduced to visual shortcuts and cultural clichés? BaseSGN was tasked to create an identity that felt unmistakably Vietnamese without falling into the expected. To reflect the complexity of a city and a country in motion, while meeting the weight of AGI’s global reputation. A non-profit, multi-layered event spanning several days, formats, and audiences, requiring a system that holds together yet remains alive. The challenge was to provoke and inspire, capturing a contemporary energy that feels real and vibrant. Something that resonates with international visitors, while offering locals a version of Vietnam they recognize and feel proud of.

A system born from the street. Conceived, designed, and produced by the BaseSGN team, the project takes shape as a full 360° undertaking, developed over nearly a year. From visual identity to conferences, from venue design to program curation, from city-wide communications to merchandise produced with local makers, every layer is shaped as one continuous experience. At its core, “ĐÂY,” meaning “here,” anchors the work in presence and immediacy. The system draws from Ho Chi Minh City’s streets: lightboxes, vernacular type, layered signage, a visual rhythm that is dense, direct, and unapologetic. An approach defined as “economical maximalism.” Type becomes democratic, widely used, and instantly familiar. Layouts stretch, compress, and collide across formats, pushing legibility to its limits, then moving past it. Colors are loud, direct, and impossible to ignore. Every element follows the city’s relentless pace, where chaos becomes structure and rhythm replaces rules. The result is an identity that doesn’t explain Vietnam. It exists within it. Here and now.