For three consecutive years, Volume designed the branding and promotion for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Rather than fall back on Jewish clichés and using film stills to drive the visual story, we instead proposed a communications strategy that was not only distinct from other local film festivals, but provided a new image for Jewish-related culture altogether in the Bay Area. That strategy has provided a through-line that has informed the promotion of consecutive festivals well after we stopped designing it. After 3 years of flat ticket sales, festival attendance increased by 15% the first year and continued to increase over the next two.
The identity for the 2007 Jewish Film Festival is based on our idea of “Festival of Light,” an intersection of the film medium and Jewish culture. We used sophisticated, mysterious and evocative imagery through literal “light painting” and expressive, fluid typography that also speaks to Jewish culture converging at the festival. The festival identity had to be expressed across a variety of media, including tickets, guides, badges, programs, shirts, bags, and a 30-second trailer. We specified orange staff shirts so the volunteers could be easily located by attendees in a morass of other filmgoers and paparazzi.
