Avondale Film Festival

Client
Capital Heights Consulting, Avondale Dev. Corp.

Year
2024-present

Avondale Film Fest (AFF) is an annual, local film festival held in Cincinnati’s Avondale community (See More). Created and conducted by non-profit organization, Avondale Development Corporation, the event brings together dozens of film enthusiasts from every age group. While celebrity guests and panelists also attend to share their wisdom, the event is most dedicated to providing a platform for filmmakers—both local and abroad—to showcase their work.

I’ve been provided the honor to handle the brand identity and future art direction of this new event. Development is ongoing as the event now enters its second year.

Logo/Title + Identity Briefing

Origin sketches

To develop AFF’s identity, I began thinking of as many different components of ‘film’ iconography as possible; This would include film reels, movie ticket stubs and cameras. With that in mind, my research of preexisting film festival brands, showed that many of them lean heavily on the traditional ‘film reel’ iconography, thus officially making it most derivative. Despite that, I didn’t want to scratch ‘film reels’ out completely, but I did try to avoid defaulting to it in my first sketches below:

Typography

Whichever direction I was to go iconography-wise, what I knew for sure was I wanted to provide the AFF logo a strong presence, and that would happen by first finding a bold, legible typeface; Enter Facile Black. I followed that up by bringing in a simple compliment for secondary text with typeface Futura, in order to acknowledge ADC’s involvement.

Primary

Secondary

Color Palette

ADC looked to utilize their preexisting brand colors in the identity for Avondale Film Fest. While there was no protest on my end, I did fill that their green color would be best left out and to stick to the blue shades with a touch of yellow. Blue shades would serve to convey ‘trust’ and ‘communication,’ while yellow illustrates ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘opportunity.’ These are all important emotions that the event aims to create for participants.

Logo/Style Explorations

Once the Facile Black typeface was established, I began exploring ways to combine film iconography with its lovely, bold block shapes. My goal would be to establish two different versions of the logo: one with the text fully spelled out and another with the text abbreviated. Either version would obviously serve the same purpose, but usage based on proper application.

Regarding the film iconography, I did my best to stay away from settling on a ‘film reel,’ but in the end decided it was actually the best way to go 🤣. Although derivative, I figured it’s already proven and recognizable to most, thus meaning it communicates best. It would also allow for creating more dynamic graphic treatments in the future.

AFF Primary Logo (white background)