How do you make a brand timeless but never static? (A Seoul International Film Festival Case Study)
- Jon Račinskas
- Jul 28
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 18
In 2019, the Seoul International Film Festival was approaching its tenth anniversary, but it faced an unusual challenge: after several years of dormancy, the festival needed to reconnect with audiences while re-establishing its place within South Korea’s cultural landscape.
The opportunity wasn’t simply to design a new visual identity but to define what the festival should represent over the next decade and beyond.
Discover
Every festival develops traditions; the challenge is knowing which ones to preserve. Working closely with the Seoul Tourism Organization, we explored what made the festival distinctive, how it had evolved, and what role it could play in Seoul’s increasingly competitive cultural calendar.
Rather than chasing contemporary design trends, we focused on building a brand that felt unmistakably Korean while remaining accessible to an international audience.
Align
One decision shaped every creative decision that followed: the festival itself needed a timeless identity.
Each individual season needed the freedom to express its own personality, so instead of designing a single campaign, I developed a modular brand system.
The core identity drew inspiration from traditional Korean visual culture and remained consistent year after year, while each festival season introduced its own colour palette, campaign artwork, and visual expression.
The inaugural system paired a permanent black, white, and deep red identity with a distinctive 2019 campaign in aqua and purple, establishing a framework that could evolve annually without sacrificing recognition. This separated the brand from the campaign, allowing the festival to evolve without needing to reinvent itself every year.
Activate
What began as a branding engagement quickly expanded. As a consulting Creative Director, I recruited and led an international creative team representing thirteen countries across design, marketing, production, and festival operations.
Together we extended the identity across posters, environmental graphics, digital experiences, social campaigns, publications, wayfinding, merchandise, and festival operations, ensuring every audience touchpoint expressed the same strategic vision.
The identity was designed to become a platform the festival could build upon for years to come.
The Outcome
The refreshed identity reintroduced the Seoul International Film Festival with a brand system that balanced cultural authenticity with long-term flexibility.
More importantly, it established a strategic foundation capable of supporting future festivals without requiring a complete redesign each season.
A successful cultural brand doesn’t need to reinvent itself every year if its framework is strong enough to evolve.
What this project reinforced
One of the biggest mistakes organizations make is confusing a campaign with a brand. Campaigns are meant to change. Brands are meant to endure.
By separating the permanent identity from each year’s creative expression, the festival gained something much more valuable than a new logo: it gained a system capable of growing alongside the organization for years to come.
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