Norwich Film Festival Poster Competition 2014

Last year I entered the Norwich Film Festival Poster competition. I only submitted one design, it was a very basic design as the important details had to be altered at a later date after selection of the top 8 posters. Mine made it into the top 8 which was a great achievement! however I didn't keep track of my emails and after many emails of Norwich Film Festival the competition closed and I hadn't edited and resubmitted my poster with the dates and location of the event so my original poster was submitted for judging alongside all of the edited submissions of other creatives. So obviously I didn't win because of this however to get into the top 8 was great considering I was really disappointed with the design and knew I was capable of much better. So this year I have come back to it and have myself more time to design a range of posters for the event. I hope to submit more than one so that there is a range for them to choose from.

This is my submission for last years competition. I was disappointed that I hadn't read the emails to change it ready for the final judging. But it was still in the top 8!

2014 Brief

We are looking for one artist to design a poster for us, which will be used during the 2014 Norwich Film Festival. The competition is FREE and OPEN TO ALL. Entrants should send their designs tosubmissions@norwichfilmfestival.co.uk with ‘POSTER COMPETITION’ as the subject line.

1. We would prefer posters to be portrait, but landscape designs will also be accepted.
2. Posters should be scalable, and be ready to print on at least A2 sized paper (420x596mm) without degradation.
3. Please send us your high quality image file (jpg, png, tiff etc. No programme files such as .ai) as a digital file either via email or download link.
4. a) It must feature the words ”Norwich Film Festival”, “Spring 2014″ and our URL.
4. b) When the dates for the 2014 festival are confirmed, the poster will need to be updated.
5. No other text should appear on the poster without written permission from NFF beforehand.
6. The first phase of the competition (general submissions) closes December 1st 2013.
7. The second phase of the competition (public vote) will begin on January 1st 2014.
8. The top three designs will be announced on January 24th 2014.
9. The winner will be announced on February 1st 2014.

I started to look back at some older winners for the competition and I also looked at other film festival posters. Designer Saul Bass created many film festival posters so I looked a lot into these and looked at his style, color choices, composition and type. I wanted to incorporate cameras into my designs purely because of the theme - film. I did plenty of research into the event and made sure I knew what it was about so that my posters could reflect that. The deadline for submissions is December 1st so I hope to have done at least 2 more designs by then so I have a range to submit.

This is one of my designs for this years competition. It is fairly similar to my other submission (below). It is fairly minimalist however it is bright and stands out. The viewer can clearly see what it is for.

This is my second design. I have gave it a dark background so that everything else on it stands out and has a neon feel. I think this is effective and the filmstrip border across the bottom creates a border for the small-print and logo at the bottom.