Designing a poster for a event as FITC these days, is more than before, part of a bigger visual promotion campaign. Over the years the events opening titles have become the most important visual output for the conference, and for the designer. Posters and other still imagery are based upon the opening title design. In 2013 GMUNK designed the first full visual campaign with opening titles, print and online visuals. Inspired by the film ‘Enter the Void’ directed by Gaspar Noé, which was that year’s theme. Now in 2017 the 10th anniversary visuals are designed by Murat Pak. His creation evolves around the idea of a "Product X” and plays with negative and positive space.

Looking at the ten posters you’ll notice that they all have a very different style. “For each event, we select an artist that we'd like to work with. Mostly we look at our speaker list that year and pick one from that list. We work together with them on the theme/idea, and then we let them do their thing. We are kept in the loop along the process, but generally we give the artist full creative control for the artwork. There is a lot of trust given to the artist, but it’s one of the reasons we are careful in our selection process. We get contacted by a lot of people who want to do the creative for our events.” says Shawn Pucknell, founding director of FITC.

By deconstructing the posters, you see that over the years elements of information disappear. Like sponsor logos’, event url, sometimes even the date is not present. That the event date is not present is very unusual, because the main goal of a poster is to inform people. The FITC logo disappears as well, but the name becomes more and more part of the graphic style. The real consistent element in all designs is the conference payoff: Design, Technology, Cool shit!

The first years the posters have complex background visuals, where the information elements are pushed to the borders, as garniture. Since 2012 the posters have a more centered orientation. Title and year above the main images and a payoff at the bottom. The Amsterdam X (2017) poster has a contemporary minimal look, which is a very current style at the moment. The design has a serene feeling, wanting to start moving.

Dark, almost black. These tones, are very dominant in the color pallet used by the different designers over the years. The posters by Geoffrey Lillemon (2010) and Peter Jaworowski(2012) are in a richer more colorful pallet. This probably just happens without a specific reason.

The funny thing is that the posters by Tom Bogman (2009), Geoffrey Lillemon (2010), Peter Jaworowski (2102), GMUNK (2013), and Murat Pak (2017) give the feeling that they want to start or continue moving. Fast, wild or almost not noticeable. This tension in the visuals makes looking at them very exciting. It raise the question will animated poster design be the future for these types of posters? It probably will.

Want to meet us, and discuss the posters, we are attending FITC Amsterdam X, see you there! As the conference is a multi-track event, we made a schedule for the two days, which you can download here.

20 – 21 February 2017
Pakhuis De Zwijger
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Save 100 EUR off on any ticket with discount code ‘neonmoire’

Rama Allen, Mr Bingo, Jared Ficklin, GMUNK, Raoul Marks, Stacey Mulcahy, Kim Alpert, Anrick Bregman, Jessica Cobb, Ubi de Feo, Jamie Dobson, Chris Dooley, Cyrille Fauvel, Vitaly Friedman, Stefan Grambart, Eleanor Harding, Dan Hett, Ian Kirby, Robert Lindström, Denis Lirette, Marta Marszal, Stephen Martell, Mc Bess, Musketon, Jakob Nylund, Pak, Irene Pereyra, Maral Pourkazemi, Gordon Reid, Frank Reitberger, Anton Repponen, Mark Rigley, Krisjanis Rijnieks, James Rowley, Ekaterina Solomeina, Basheer Tome, Bart Van de Wiele, Frederik Vanhoutte, James Veitch, Kasper Verweij, David Vogel, Liam Young