In cinema, the timeline can chop and change, pull back or jump forward. This idea of narrative structure, and how design could play with it, became the starting point for Cairo-based studio Ntsal as they developed an identity for the 18th edition of the Panorama of the European Film.
The team began with thinking about “the structure of the film timeline”, says Amr Bakr, senior graphic and type designer at Ntsal. As designers with an interest in motion design, they were also drawn to the tools used in filmmaking, which led to exploring “time as something that could be expanded and compressed”. From that, they developed the identity’s kaleidoscopic, shifting graphic patterns, resembling a timeline stretching, contracting and shifting across the composition.
“It also suggests the interlinking of events throughout the festival,” Amr adds. Ntsal started with the poster, then continued to expand and play with the resulting forms throughout the identity. “There was this flexibility with interacting with these shapes and the plethora of exciting forms that could emerge resulting from the simple acts of compression and expansion.”