This film festival logo proves originality isn't dead in graphic design
by https://www.creativebloq.com/author/tom-may · Creative Bloq- Copy link
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Film festivals don't have a direct impact on most people's lives. Few of us actually get around to attending one, and the films they feature rarely reach our nearest arts cinema, let alone the local multiplex. Yet, whether we ever buy a ticket to one, film festivals really do matter.
This is where new talent, both in front of and behind the camera, gets to show people what they're made of; where fresh and off-the-wall ideas get their first airing in public. A typical festival is a bubbling cauldron of visual styles, storytelling techniques and new voices, which will then gradually filter into mainstream cinema, advertising, music videos and more.
Occasionally too, a festival hit will break out in its own right. Reservoir Dogs started its journey at Sundance; Parasite at Cannes. Even if you've seen neither film, you'll have felt their ripple effects on culture in general.
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Wth all that heated experimentation and ambition, you'd think a film festival logo would be another canvas for creativity. But too often, these events seem to just throw together a bunch of elements (a camera, a film reel, a clapperboard) without much thought. So it was a pleasant surprise to see the logo for the Kolkata International Film Festival (KIFF) does something very different.
A single idea
Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of West Bengal in India. This year the 32nd edition of its annual film festival runs from 16 to 23 December. Recently, its organisers revealed this new logo (shown above), which is the work of Sandip Ray.
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Sandip is not only a filmmaker himself, he's also the son of the legendary Satyajit Ray: a director who was also a designer working on book covers, film posters and typefaces. And in this logo, Sandip has done his father proud.
Where the typical film festival logo juggles several references, this one commits to a single idea, and is all the better for it. Heavy black letters are cut into by burnt-orange triangles, each edged with sprocket holes like a strip of film.
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If someone had described that to me before I'd seen it, I'd probably have thought "That sounds awful". Film strips are the clip art of cinema: as big a cliché as a popcorn box, and increasingly anachronistic to boot.
But here, the execution is everything. Crucially, Sandip hasn't used the film strips as decoration of the logo, but as its foundation. They're not just a way of adding interest to the logo design; they are the logo design. It's the difference between committing to an idea and not actually having one in the first place.
To my mind, the triangles could be seen as doubling up as play and rewind buttons… although admittedly this might just be me.
Breaking the mould
Overall, the important thing about this logo is that it doesn’t look like anything else. I've spent so many years looking at perfectly formed sans serifs that it's made me weary. And the idea that more and more people are going to use AI tools that serve up an average of this style depresses me even more.
KIFF’s logo, in contrast, is chunky, angular and a bit odd. Some people might dislike it for that very reason. But I love the fact that two colours and one bold idea are all it needs to be instantly recognisable, and that’s got to be an inspiration for logo designers everywhere.