BFI Southbank – A different take on cinema

How do you get people back to the BFI after lockdown restrictions and compete with the heavy hitters on the London culture scene? We created an awareness campaign to remind people what makes the BFI experience different, richer, more absorbing than your local multiplex.

Because of copyright issues and the fact that we weren’t promoting particular films or a season, using movie imagery was out. Working with copywriter Jim K Davies, it was decided that the copy should do the heavy lifting, supported by a suitably arresting typographic treatment.

It was one line that struck a chord with the client – ‘a different take’. We built a campaign around this idea, creating a series of six witty poster headlines and using ‘a different take on cinema’ as the unifying sign-off line.

With the confidence to keep it simple, we went big and bold with typography and colour. With a distinctive and suitably filmic typeface ‘Jean-Luc’, designed by Carvalho Bernau in homage to the title sequence lettering used in Godard’s New Wave films.

The campaign appeared as static and animated posters in-house at the BFI, as well as on the Underground and various poster sites around London. The open-ended nature of the campaign means it will continue to be rolled out in the future.