The Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) came to us looking to establish a whole new brand identity. The new identity would need to honor the established 25-year history of the festival, while communicating the festival’s forward take on cinema and the medium’s endless possibilities.

Our initial brief was to visually communicate the new PIFF mantra “Cinema Unbound”. For us this meant transcending tradition and definition. Cinema, at its core, is the shared experience of story. A symbiotic relationship between filmmaker and viewer, cinema is the binding force that brings these dual pursuits to a head. Just as a cause creates an effect, there can be no cinema without the relationship between the maker and viewer.

The tension and symbiotic relationship that inherently forms between maker and audience is the basis for the whole PIFF identity from logo to color palette, photography and design.