After being approached in early February 2016 by the Forest City Film Festival (FCFF) to redesign their new logo/mark we were excited to get to work. With seemingly endless directions to take, we started by focusing on identifying what made the festival unique. Emphasizing the “forest” felt crucial as it is an aspect that sets this local film festival apart (for those of you who aren’t from around here, London is known as the Forest City).
We began visualizing the look of the logo by collecting inspiration and creating what’s called a moodboard. This concentrated collection of inspiration became the foundation we’d build upon as we moved forward—both as a reference point for the client, and an inspiration to ourselves.
After sharing this inspiration with the great folks at the FCFF, we were able to narrow our direction down and choose an even more detailed set of work to inspire our future design. We found that there was interest in exploring a traditional woodcut style with a simplified treatment. From there, we set to work on various concepts to begin the work on our "forest" themed, simple woodcut logo.
As we began to play with the traditional woodcut style, we collectively decided to switch gears and focus more on the simplified aspect of the moodboard we’d discussed earlier— and to emphasize the “city” more than the “forest.”
This change in direction led to a new burst of creativity where the idea of “a city of film strips” surfaced.
We created numerous takes on this new direction, then selected our favourites, and refined them for presentation.
Out of this process a new Forest City Film Festival logo was born.
“At the beginning of the development of our film festival, the rTraction team led us through an incredibly valuable process to help us get to the heart of our identity, which is both a celebration of film in its own right and a celebration of London’s own talented creative community. The work they did with us helped them to develop a logo that set the tone for our new festival. We feel the logo stands out and really speaks to who we are. We have had so many people tell us that they love it including executive directors of other film festivals. The outstanding work that rTraction did helps us stand out.”