The Chicago International Film Festival is the longest-running competitive film festival in North America. It’s also one of our city’s most anticipated annual events. So we were delighted when Ogilvy Chicago and CIFF came to us to create the long piece that would be shown before each film. Driving attendance, we also created short animated pieces that aired across social channels.

Primarily a type-driven project, our challenge was figuring out how to use typography to articulate complex thoughts. To do that, we boiled each idea down to the simplest visual representation possible, and then animated it. So much fun! In typograhic answer to a casting call for all kinds of movie watching “types” we launched into word play.  The words, “Movie lovers” squished in for an “e” and “l” smooch. The phrase “Loud laughers” ha-ha’d in giggly “h” and “a” animations. And illustrating “popcorn aficiandos”? We literally popped the word “popcorn” into big fat puffs.

Such simple, bold solutions were a fun welcome to viewers, brought Ogilvy’s branding for the festival to life, and celebrated CIFF. Our simple black and white palette, minimal type treatments and great sound design also worked really well with our finish: CIFF’s dramatic logo: a composite of early film actresses eyes shown as repeated framed in a film strip.