The Oakland independent film festival
Event identity design
Rooted in the creative hotspot of Oakland, California, the Oakland Independent Film Festival is a celebration of film by artists young and old. Just as the culture is diverse in this port town, this campaign focuses on blending elements of design in a collage meant to capture everything that this festival has to offer.
THE OBJECTIVE
The challenge presented to me with this project was to create a unique identity for the promotion of an event that could translate across multiple mediums. The event I chose to promote was the Oakland Independent Film Festival. As a person who enjoys film festivals and going to the movies, I knew that a festival in such a diverse part of the country deserved to have its cultures represented. What if there was a way to bring the different cultures of Oakland, California, together to celebrate the culture and works of the artists that live there?
STRATEGY + SOLUTION
After exploring the demographics of my audience and the components of film festival elements, I developed a visual language to convey the sensory experiences of attending this kind of event. I executed this through using symbolism such as the event identity, related cinema equipment, corresponding sensory parts of the body, and the native languages of the different cultures in the Oakland area. The graphic shapes blended with collage-style imagery are united by a limited color palette and kept in focus by using understated typography. My goal for the event posters was to invite the viewer to go further in to the collage and investigate the imagery. From this main focus on the posters, the goal was to translate that same look and feel in a way that was new but still recognizable to the overall event identity and merchandise.
SYMBOLISM
The Poppy is the California state flower.
Above: The event identity can be seen throughout the poster series.
Left: The languages of the different cultures are interspersed throughout the posters. Also the knotted tree below the characters is of Oakland most famous oak tree.
Cinema Reel + Oak Foliage
Tickets & Merchandising
