Twenty-five years ago, under the presidency of Raimondo Rezzonico and the artistic direction of David Streiff, the Festival del film Locarno unified for the first time its visual identity. The Festival owes its first corporate identity to the Zurich based agency GGK, headed by Hermann Strittmatter and Fredy Weisser. Their proposal was based on a simple thought: a black on yellow brush-mark to visually recall the leopard fur. This new image was subsequently implemented by a stunning series of posters and demonstrated its validity by taking over everything, transforming the whole region of Locarno every summer since. Simple ideas are often taken for granted – here in Locarno they’re not. We are fully aware of the important contribution, for which we will always be grateful, GGK made over the last 25 years to the Festival.

In 2007, to mark the Festival’s 60th anniversary, President Marco Solari and Artistic Director Frédéric Maire have appointed the London agency Jannuzzi Smith with the task of reviving our corporate identity – holding tight to the principle of the black on yellow pattern. Adjusting to the demands of today's media landscape, the Festival has begun to change its image, in an operation which will be spread over several years to stay in line with its investment plan. A shorter name, a new logo and a new font will fulfill our ever-changing communication requirements: from marketing to advertising, from conventional to online publishing.

The new look of the leopard pattern – in the words of Frédéric Maire «finally a leopard able to move on our screens» – is perhaps the most significant change. To create this image, Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith, assisted by Tim Flach, a professional animal photographer, and the film production company Between the Eyes, have photographed and filmed a living leopard named Chota and living in a sanctuary in the middle of the countryside in the North-West of Oxford in England. Rejected at birth by her mother due to her blindness, thanks to a careful minder who took her home every night, Chota managed to survive and became a thriving, exquisitely elegant and a touch dangerous leopard. She is gradually becoming a ubiquitous symbol, from street decoration to merchandising items, but above all since 2007 she has appeared on the big screen in Piazza Grande, in the trailer made to sign a new decade for the Festival del film Locarno.

The 2011 poster

The poster for the 64th edition, created by Jannuzzi Smith, is the first in a new series of three posters on the theme “Beauty and the Beast”.
It is divided into two sections: action and reaction, separated by vertical bars that suggest captivity and captivation. The relationship of the protagonists is that of ours with film. Held in each other’s gaze, they are simultaneously distanced by two separate projections requiring the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image — distortions that compel the viewer to engage with the images from different perspectives, much as film itself acts upon us.

Download the poster

Jannuzzi Smith

The work of design agency Jannuzzi Smith, founded in London in 1994 by Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith, is characterised by innovative use of new technologies applied to the various fields of cross-media communication. The Sunday Times numbered Jannuzzi and Smith amongst their ‘Hot 100 men and women who will be the movers and shakers, groovers and trendsetters of the next decade’.

www.jannuzzismith.com