Palm Springs International Film Festival (fictional rebrand)
A new identity system for the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) and ShortFest as a hypothetical brand identity project at ArtCenter College of Design.
PSIFF is one of the largest festivals in North America, welcoming over 135,000 attendees each year for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. ShortFest is the largest short film event in North America, and operates under the Palm Springs International Film Festival as a platform to feature emerging talent.
As a rebranding, I proposed a modern visual identity system that draws from the local vernacular of Palm Springs. The PSIFF identity, and its sister micro-identity ShortFest, use mid-century modern aesthetics paired with bright colors and wood type influences from the same time period. The multi-colored confetti graphic element celebrates the diversity of voices that are showcased at the festival.
A series of three posters for the PSIFF announce “Palm” “Springs” “2019” with big type, mixing layers and shapes of Bixa, a design that started out as an exploration of wood type by Mark van Wageningen in 2015. The concept – reconstructing lettershapes by printing their deconstructed parts in four print runs / four colors – was published as a (color) webfont in 2016, and as a digital typeface family in thirteen styles in 2017.
