CatarinaSampaio^design

Art direction, advertising campaign, graphic design, website, merchandise, motion graphics, social media templates and guidelines for the 17th edition of LEFFEST film festival.

More than one decade after taking place in Lisbon for the first time, in 2003, LEFFEST changed and became Lisboa Film Festival, thus, needing a rebrand.

We wanted to create a visual identity that was adaptative and open-minded enough to represent LEFFEST as a place of convergence and celebration of artistic creation, where filmmakers and different professionals in the film industry are joined by some of the most exciting artists and thinkers of the contemporary world. Thus, making the LEFFEST the perfect setting to explore the topics that are transforming culture.

So, we took the L letter and used it to build a seven-point star. The seven represents Lisbon and its seven hills and, at the same time, it stands for Cinema as the seventh art.

As A.I. is becoming more and more interwoven in our daily lives, in 2023, LEFFEST is featuring a discussion on art and A.I., which sets the common ground for us to re-evaluate what we think intelligence is, both in human and artificial contexts, and to marvel at the power of its creative capabilities.

For the graphic identity, we explored the symbolism of light as a device for Cinema and an ancient symbol of understanding and intellectual thought. We employed moving, hazy, pixel-like light reflections with marble figures to represent the entanglement between humans and technology.

At this historic moment, when we became creators – meaning creators of intelligence – we need to rethink our take on creativity, because "to erase the line between humans and machines, is to obscure the line between man and gods" (Ex-Machina, by Alex Garland) and with that, comes great responsibility.