For the ninth year running, Pentagram developed the identity design and motion graphics package for the 38th Film Independent Spirit Awards, the 2023 edition of the annual ceremony honoring the best in independent film.
Every year, Pentagram reinvents the Film Independent brand identity for the Spirit Awards. The 2023 ceremony marked a radical change for the honors: a shift to non-gendered acting categories such as “Best Lead Performance” and “Best Supporting Performance,” to celebrate talent based on merit, rather than the traditional gender binary. This merging of categories inspired the designers to take a visually layered approach to the show graphics, with the elements melding, overlapping and interacting to create dynamic new forms and colors.
The ceremony was hosted by the comedian Hasan Minhaj, and the big winner was the kaleidoscopic comedy-drama “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which took home seven awards including Best Feature. In another major change, for the first time since 1987 the show was streamed live on IMDb’s YouTube channel, as well as Film Independent’s YouTube channel and Twitter.
This move to streaming led the Pentagram team to think about making the packaging a little more direct and digital, in contrast to the stretching, swirling, and molten metal of previous years: high contrast graphics, with the type primarily in black and white, surrounded by blasts of color that blend, blur and bleed into one another. The colorful intersections reveal new shapes and block-like forms.
The palette riffs on Pentagram’s original system for Film Independent, dialing up the brand colors to iridescent and shimmering gradients that are another nod to the vibrant and diverse spectrum of awards and nominees. A gradient blend highlights the word “Independent,” and other letters momentarily slip into color as they overlap with each other.
As in the past, the show packaging and graphics were integrated into every aspect of the ceremony. The team created the hero logo animation, an opening sequence for the show, and title packages for all 23 categories, as well as a series of ambient stage loops, lower thirds, transitions, framing devices and a digital program book.
Previously: 2022 Film Independent Spirit Awards, 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards, 2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards, 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards, 2018 Film Independent Spirit Awards, 2017 Film Independent Spirit Awards, 2016 Film Independent Spirit Awards, 2015 Film Independent Spirit Awards.
