The Rebirth of OFFF

art direction Creative Direction strategy campaign visual identity graphic design OFFF OFFF festival festival Event

The Rebirth of OFFF

OFFF Festival’s new rebranding and website case-study

The Story

Founded by Héctor Ayuso over a decade ago, OFFF started as a concept that transformed into an event joining creative talents from all around the world all together in one place. The main goal of OFFF is to become the key meeting point for artists who share the same interests to be in one place. Today, OFFF is more than an event, it is more than a Festival, OFFF has become a community providing the ultimate creativity experience.

Evolving context

In 2013, CROWD studio, one of the most talented Barcelona based digital and design agency, has transformed the famous 3 “FFF” into one icon, it was the birth of the official OFFF logo that maintained its presence for 5 years. With with over 18 years of content and a Festival that is ever-evolving, growing every year to become one the most important event to attend worldwide while providing endless innovation, it was time for a change. The OFFF icon has finally become visually recognised by everyone, so it became unnecessary to conserve the 3 “FFF” in the logo. The OFFF icon is now visually abstract, simplified and more compact thanks to re-thickness of the symbols.

Typography

OFFF has been conveying one true message: “our audience, our speakers and our attendees are our base. Without them this wouldn’t be possible” so for such an important brand, user-experience is very crucial. We had to create something valuable for both, past attendees and new comers, to understand the message behind OFFF and to be able to navigate through 18 years worth of contents. Starting with the typography, the most important element to the human being’s eyes, we decided to work with a corporate font, showcasing some seriousness yet with a touch of flexibility.

Problem solving

From concepts to various visual campaigns in every edition and with over 8 OFFF on Tour cities, OFFF Festival is always changing its aspects. But the unity of the brand and the team behind it is the Festival's foundation. Over the past few years, we have noticed an overall shift in the brand’s identity. OFFF, the brand proving itself with the concept of having no brief and giving the complete freedom plus the invitation to create, this also had its consequence. We noticed that with so many openness, the brand unfortunately lost its visual presence and visual aspect throughout the Festival, online and onsite. So how do we showcase the dynamic aspect of the brand while maintaining its base? By creating a definite strategy in the brand’s communication structure and building a branding system.

With this new approach we are adding more control to the brand use, where the brand gets more identified with the ability to adapt to other contents therefore the Festival becomes more firm and more strengthened.

While using this new system of communication grid, the website become one dynamic block of contents making it easier for the user to adapt. This allows us to recreate the whole website as a platform and as an archive of news, past speakers, new speakers and events. An organised clean space.

The Board is the landing page, it’s the place to be to know about the latest news and announcements. To make it more playful we call the news blocks “pins” and “pin-offs”.

Now it’s easier to navigate and search through OFFF artists. With more than 40 speakers in every edition, we were able to join all this information and structure it into years and OFFF editions.