The Challenge:
The Documentary Channel tasked me with creating a logo and title sequence for a new monthly show about documentary films making on the festivals circuit consisting of red carpet interviews with celebrities and filmmakers. “DocFest” was the title chosen by the programming department. I wondered how I might do something interesting with the title, given that DOC was used across the channel as a shortened version of Documentary Channel. I wanted to make this a singular, stand-alone, sub-brand and use capitalized letters to differentiate this from the lowercase logo.
The Solution:
As the subject was based on film festivals I started to look at the paraphernalia of the subject to see if there might be content to that might feed into the graphics or be divested from them.
As the title was set, I began with logo treatments which would become a key elements of the brand package. I liked the idea of using serif and sans-serif typefaces together to contrast the two words. While looking for suitable typefaces, I began to look at script typefaces. I sketched a couple pf ideas then saw that the letter ‘f’ had possibilities. The shape of the “f’ reminded me of a strip of film (which is very overused with this subject). I then noticed that the film strip was like an unfurled red-carpet . I realized that the rolling out of the carpet could provide a visual thread and a simple narrative element that could resolve to the final logo.
The Result:
I felt I was able to get away from the cliche of film strips and create branding that worked with the context of the show. The addition of film festival titles as a multilayered scrolling text background provided another graphic element. This was one of my first projects using CG and the unfurling carpet challenged my novice skills. The titles were well received and the show ran for a number of years until a new format was designed called “DocTalk”.
