A Photography Festival Connects Its Name with Every Picture

A photography festival needs an identity that works with many different pictures. Foreign Policy Design saw a problem in earlier editions of the Singapore International Photography Festival. The festival's logo and the photographs did not feel closely connected. For the 7th edition in 2020/2021, the studio made the festival name part of each image layout.

Festival Director Gwen Lee chose the theme Departing & Arriving for this edition. It explored migration, belonging, and personal journeys across two centuries of Singaporean history. The studio looked at how magazine layouts connect photographs with nearby text. It then created a flexible system where the festival name surrounds each photograph. The picture and the name share the same frame.

The studio changed the position of parts of the wordmark to fit different images. A wordmark is a logo made from the name's letters. The designers split it in Illustrator and InDesign so parts could move around rectangular pictures. The movement takes its idea from a camera shutter. A shutter controls when light enters a camera to make a photograph.

The color choices also connect the identity with photography rather than adding unrelated decoration. The studio studied film photographs by William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, and Saul Leiter. It combined warm colors, such as terracotta and mustard yellow, with deeper blues and dark tones. These colors appeared on printed items and festival passes. The printed Festival Guide also included maps of the 37 Emerald Hill venue.

The same design rules worked across many materials and changing event plans. Passes placed colored ticket information inside the split lettering. Other uses included tote bags, shirts, camera stickers, and graphics for streamed talks. Pandemic delays moved the schedule from August 2020 to January 2021. The article presents a system that could adapt across those different needs. Its main idea is to connect the event's identity directly with the photographs it shows.