Student Reinterpretations of the 66th Pula Film Festival Visual Identity
After the initial fear of facing their task and with some help from their peers in higher grades, the students of the first grade of the School of Applied Arts and Design in Pula proceeded to reinterpret the visual identity of the 66th Pula Film Festival. In first grade of high school, students have not yet chosen their specialisations, and in the subject Typography, under the mentorship of professor Denis Sardoz, the head of the school’s graphic design department, they elaborated and further developed the concept for the visual identity of this year’s Festival, originally developed by Marko Rašić.
Sardoz said the students were quite surprised that they had been chosen for such an important task, as they see it, a task of playing around with the official visual identity of Pula Film Festival. The obvious associations to the number 66, alluded to by the author of the visual identity itself - the eyes with eyebrows, glasses, and openings through which to peek, the blueprint of the Arena or a film roll - have been expanded upon by potential future designers. They have added different elements, such as the eyes of a cartoon character, of animals or people, heads, parts of fruit, the now already vintage objects from the turn of the century, painter’s palettes, etc. Even though they are not very experienced designers, this endearing task gave the students the freedom to show the experience they do have, so they have incorporated their own ways of expression and aspirations into the typographic symbol of this year’s Pula Film Festival. Some of their ideas include the expected adding of the third six to the number of the Festival’s editions, as well as some other avenues, but there are also solutions which could easily work as part of the visual identity of the 66th Pula Film Festival.
Professor Sardoz praised the concept developed by Marko Rašić, who is the author of the entire visual identity of this year’s Pula Film Festival, and emphasised the fact that simple and keeping it simple solutions are always the best way to go. Sardoz thinks the right choice was made, because what he can see represents Pula Film Festival clearly and nicely.
The proposal submitted by authors from the Rašić-Vrabec Studio was selected following a public call for proposals for the Festival’s visual identity last October. Their proposal was selected in the second round of the call by a panel consisting of Davor Kliman (headmaster of the School of Applied Arts and Design in Pula), Ketrin Miličević Mijošek (director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Istria), Miodrag Čerina (president of the Governing Council of Pula Film Festival Public Institution), Gordana Restović (director of Pula Film Festival), and Sanela Pliško (spokesperson of Pula Film Festival).
This is the second consecutive year that the visual identity of the current Festival is selected in this way, and it will continue in the following year, as the director of Pula Film Festival Gordana Restović announced at the presentation of this year’s visual identity. Perhaps the work of one of the now students exhibiting in the hall of Valli Cinema will be selected for the visual identity in the coming years.
