Ministry of Culture
National Comic Day: How We Gave Character to an Empty Frame
Slovenia gained a new cultural holiday. We made sure it was worthy of attention.
- Client
- Ministry of Culture
- Year
- 2025
Comics. We've all held one at some point. Yet despite a tradition of more than a century in Slovenia, comics were long regarded as a second-rate literary form: entertainment for children, not serious culture.
When the Ministry of Culture invited us to develop a communication campaign for the first National Comic Day, we knew this was more than a promotional assignment. It was about establishing a new national holiday.
01The challenge
Reading culture in Slovenia is declining. Readership is falling across all generations, most noticeably among young people, who spend more and more time in front of screens and find it ever harder to concentrate for long.
2025 brought a special opportunity: the centenary of the birth of Miki Muster, one of Slovenia's most important comic creators. The Government of the Republic of Slovenia decided that 22 November would become National Comic Day, making Slovenia one of the few countries in the world to mark such a day officially.
What the holiday had to change
- A second-rate literary form.
- Entertainment for children.
- Not serious culture.
- A legitimate literary and visual form.
- A boost to reading and visual literacy.
- Reading for every generation.
02The idea: an empty frame
We built the campaign around a simple yet powerful idea: an empty comic frame as an invitation to create.
Comics live in the reader, not in a logo. That is why we designed the visual identity around an empty frame, a space waiting to be filled with someone's imagination and their own character. From this idea grew the campaign's headline slogan.
»I have character. I read comics.«
The campaign's headline slogan
03A campaign on several levels at once
The campaign ran from October to December 2025. We connected events, materials, digital content and media into one story that readers themselves took up.
From the launch to the book fair
A press conference at the Ministry of Culture (6 Oct 2025) and a professional meeting with publishers (24 Oct 2025).
This brought key stakeholders from the comics community into the project from the start.
An interactive information point at Kino Šiška.
With a board, a totem and promotional materials. Visitors became part of the story themselves: by drawing, reading and sharing.
22 November at the City Museum of Ljubljana.
Minister of Culture Asta Vrečko addressed the audience. The atmosphere came from the duo Slika z jezika, Jernej Žumer and Urh Mlakar, who combined rap and live drawing to create animated stories on canvas.
Three events at the Slovenian Book Fair.
They reached both professional and general audiences.
A headline video story and a series of shorter videos in the comic aesthetic of Slika z jezika.
A chapter of its own was the DOOH activation across the DigiLight Center network: 40 LCD displays from 18 to 24 November 2025.
Posters, comic bookmarks, stickers and a totem.
All within one visual identity combining the logo, the colour palette and a system of comic elements.
Schools, libraries and local media across Slovenia took up the story.
Organically, without any additional push.
04Results
National Comic Day 2025 became a recognisable national initiative with real reach and impact.
Campaign reach
- 60+
- media appearances in national and local online outlets
- 700+
- visitors at live events
- 1,988,418
- impressions through the DOOH activation
- 4 pages
- of special content in the Saturday edition of Delo (22 Nov 2025)
- Voluntary participation from schools and libraries across Slovenia.
- Project delivered within the fixed contract value.
»We created the space. The people gave it character.«
The most important result is not a number. National Comic Day became a genuine cultural event, with its own identity, community and a story that will continue. Because good stories always begin on a blank page.
05Where this project sits in our matrix
We work across all of these layers, and any combination is possible.
- Who we work for
- Executive leadershipCorporate communicationsHRMarketingPublic sector
- Project scope
- Small brand story (e.g. a single video)Always-on communicationBig brand story (a full campaign)Leadership transformation
- Levels of work
- Strategy and creative developmentImplementationProduction
- What we improve
- ProcessesRelationshipsContent
- Approach
- StrategicDigital and AI-poweredCreativeAdvisory
- Duration
- Short-term (up to 3 months)Mid-term (3–12 months)Long-term (a year or more)
- What we create
- DocumentsPresentationsVisual identitiesDesignWebsitesSocial mediaCopywritingPhotographyVideo storiesAnimationsPodcastsEventsWorkshops