KesselsKramer Embraces 'Weird' for Sci-fi Horror Film Festival Identity

A washing machine as your best friend, 150 square meters of blood, and an injured bird as your therapist. At Imagine Fantastic Film Festival you can find the weirdest films in science-fiction, horror, fantasy, and anime. KesselsKramer creates a new identity that celebrates what makes Imagine unique: the weirdness.

The one thing that all fantastic films at Imagine have in common is weirdness. Weird can be anything, it’s questioning the norms, distinguishing from the mainstream. Imagine believes that weird is something to be cherished, and does this through a new, ‘weird’ identity.

Rens de Jonge, creative director KesselsKramer, “Weird is a wonderful thing. It can be creepy, strange, bizarre, supernatural, anxious, spooky, but it always puts life in a different perspective. That is what fantastic films are all about."

Identity & campaign

Weird happens when you add something strange to something you already know. With this idea, KesselsKramer came up with an identity that plays with adding weirdness to something neutral. Visually, by adding a colourful typographical layer to a standard typeface. Textually, by adding unexpected elements to otherwise normal (campaign) messages. An anglerfish that provides its own light in the darkness was chosen as the festival's new logo. 

Typography

KesselsKramer teamed up with graphic designer Mārcis Lapiņš to create a font that is the essential part of the new identity. The design combines shapes from different movie genres – such as spikes (horror), slimy bubbles (sci-fi), and tentacles (anime). Similar to Imagine’s programming, all these genres are mixed into one.