Visual identity of the 58th Krakow Film Festival
Krakow Film Festival is not only about fascinating documentary, short and animated films and the filmmakers that make them and every year come to Krakow in great numbers from all over the world. The festival wouldn’t be complete without its audience. This year the viewers will decide how the festival posters, programme covers and banner ads will look like.
This year the visual identity of the Krakow Film Festival will be a collective work in which every member of the audience will have a chance to express himself or herself in a public space. Photos, pictures and texts sent in by the festival audience will be presented on the festival posters, and some of them even on the programme covers, pages of high-circulation newspapers, social media and even cinema screens.
On an especially for this purpose designed website the audience will be able to buy the festival pass or tickets for film screenings and in return receive a piece of this year’s poster space which they can then easily and intuitively fill in with drawings, photos and short portions of text. Designer and co-creator of the concept, Kuba de Barbaro, defines it as “an attempt to reclaim the public space. The content in this space is no longer produced solely by the companies and corporations, but now also by regular people”. The audience will have a chance to co-create the visual identity of the 58th Krakow Film Festival till April 23rd.
The project’s website: www.identyfikacja.krakowfilmfestival.pl
In 2011 Krakow Film Festival began its cooperation with the designer duo: Kuba Swoiński and Jakub de Barbaro, who decided to replace the annual artistic Festival poster with an innovative concept, which despite the significant visual modifications, continues to be developed.
In the previous years the duo has been systematically putting the festival films in the core of their Festival posters’ designs. They created bold compositions using the non obvious film frames, carefully selected quotes, provocative dialogs or film titles written in their original languages from often exotic countries where they were produced.
Last year the visual identity of the Festival was based on the amateur portraits of the people from the cinema world, made by the friends of the Krakow Film Foundation. The various elements of the design always created a coherent entity with the exhibition space and generated a new, individual, often humorous, and sometimes controversial context.
Jakub de Barbaro
Born in 1977 in Krakow, designer specialising in visual identity and graphic design for the publishing industry. The co-founder of the artist co-operative Goldex Poldex (2008-2012) and Szalona Galeria (2017). A former lecturer at Raffles Design Institute in Shanghai. He cooperates mainly with cultural institutions in Poland and abroad.
Kuba Sowiński
Born in 1973 in Krakow, applied arts designer, the co-creator of the nationwide design quarterly “2+3D.” Together with Wojciech Kubiena he runs a design studio Biuro Szeryfy and works at the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. A member of STGU (Association of Polish Graphic Designers). He specialises in graphic design for the publishing industry and co-operates mainly with cultural institutions and publishing houses.
The Krakow Film Festival posters designed by Jakub de Barbaro and Kuba Sowiński received the audience award in the Best Festival Poster competition at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.
Krakow Film Festival posters archive: https://www.krakowfilmfestival.pl/archiwum/plakaty-11/
Website of this year’s project: www.identyfikacja.krakowfilmfestival.pl
58th Krakow Film Festival takes place May 27th – June 3rd, 2018.