Now in its 51st year, the San Francisco International Film Festival is the longest running film festival in the Americas. Factor Design was engaged by the San Francisco Film Society to create the SFIFF 2008 identity. The design challenge was to celebrate the theme of diversity while visually uniting the inherently disparate subject matter and aesthetics of the participating films.

Factor Design’s solution, a system that incorporates a seemingly three-dimensional multicolored ribbon that interacts with still photography from the films, succeeds both functionally and conceptually: it brings cohesion to a multitude of event materials, from tickets to film trailers, while elevating the festival’s overarching mission. San Francisco Film society Executive Director Graham Leggat is thrilled with the results. “The ribbon is truly the spirit of the festival,” Leggat says. “Our tenets are discovery, exploration, and transformation, and the design encapsulates all three.”