Case study · Brand identity · 2025

The Bench Film Festival

An identity for a new film festival of true crime, documentary and psychological drama, designed as a study of judgment and truth.

A fictional festival for a student project. Film stills and the newspaper masthead are for demonstration only.

My role

Concept, naming, identity, 24-page program, poster and digital applications

Timeline

6 weeks · Fall 2025

Course

Graphic Design 2: Making Meaning, with Joe Quackenbush

Tools

Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Figma

The brief

Invent a film festival, then give it a voice.

Graphic Design 2 asked us to create a festival from scratch: a name, a mission, a lineup, a visual identity and a printed program. I chose the space where true crime, documentary and psychological drama meet.

My mission statement: to show how true stories can be cinematic, emotional and thoughtful, beyond just headlines. The audience: film fans, true-crime fans, justice-minded viewers and curious people who want more than the sensational version.

Research

Week 1

I looked at three existing festivals (the UK’s True Crime Film Festival, True Crime Fest in Europe and the Toronto True Crime Film Festival), curated a 15-film lineup, and made three moodboards to test different moods.

Moodboard I: crime-scene evidence, case files and a red-and-black thriller mood.

Moodboard II: bold editorial illustration with a bit of satire.

Moodboard III: the courtroom, with gavels, scales and Lady Justice. This one became the final direction.

From The Evidence Room to The Bench

Weeks 1–5

My first concept, The Evidence Room, leaned on crime-scene clichés: black, red, police tape and case files. After critique, I reset the whole idea around the courtroom. The festival became less about the crime and more about judgment.

Before

Week 1: The Evidence Room, a stark white sans on black with a forensic red line.

After

Week 6: The Bench, with navy, aged cream and a hand-drawn scale.

The name moved from the crime to the verdict. The bench is where a judge sits, and where the audience sits to watch.
Red went from blood to a single accent. Navy and cream took over to feel institutional and trustworthy.
The scale replaced crime-scene imagery and doubles as the wordmark, with “The” and “Bench” resting in its two pans.

Finding the mark

Weeks 2–3

I drew 100 wordmark variations, exploring redacted and forensic letterforms, then refined three directions in Illustrator so they’d hold up from a ticket stub to a poster.

An early hand-drawn wordmark: playful, but too light for the subject.

The final scale mark, tested in the brand colors.

The system

Design decisions

Every choice points back to one idea, a formal judicial dossier: authoritative colors, document-like paper and type that reads like a court transcript.

Color

Pantone 533 C
Primary: authority

Pantone 468 C
Aged document cream

Pantone 3546 C
Accent: tension, used sparingly

Pantone 4975 C
Deep shadow

Pantone 7544 C
Secondary type

Type

Display

Social Gothic

Condensed, slightly rough capitals that feel stamped and urgent, for titles and the wordmark.

Text

Paralucent

A clean, geometric sans for synopses, schedules and credits, like a court transcript.

The scale mark in all five Pantone colors.

Gavel and column patterns, used as borders across every piece.

Reworking the program

Weeks 3–6

The program had to hold a lot: 15 films, three days, synopses, ratings, quotes and showtimes. My first drafts were loud; the final version is calmer, so the information can do the work.

Before

First draft: red, white and blue film pages with heavy headers.

After

Final spread: cream pages, gavel borders and a steady grid.

Moved from loud patriotic colors to the courtroom palette.
Built one grid so stills, synopses, ratings and showtimes sit in the same place on every page.
Added the gavel border so every page reads as part of one dossier.