New York City Drone Film Festival

When the New York City Drone Film Festival first hit us up, we knew only a few things about drones: they were rad, they were expensive, and you weren’t allowed to fly the in New York. One thing we didn’t know, was how they were reinventing filmmaking–from LA movies to backyard tiny whooping (that’s a type of tiny drone, if you don’t know). And, that’s one of the reasons we got so excited to work with the NYCDFF, as it was celebrating and showcasing the best drone footage in the world.

For the design system, we developed a flexible graphics package that could be used across the festival, year and year again. The logo is (obviously) the silhouette of a drone. But, what’s that? It looks like a film reel too? Damn, that’s sort of clever. The typographic system we created is large, bold, and aggressive. It looks great on the big screen, but also works nicely on posters wheatepasted around the city, and on other swag. We round off the system with a hearty set of animations–everything from the logo to the festival title cards. Take it from us, these looked great on the silver screen. In fact, other people thought it looked pretty great too. The festival has now sold over 4,500 tickets, received over 2,000 submissions and presented 60 awards to filmmakers across the world.

We’ve now worked with the NYCDFF for three years, maintaining and tweaking the identity system, graphics package and animations each year. They’ve also continued to keep the studio well stocked with drones, which we’ve gotten pretty good at flying and filming with (calm down FAA, we fly them outside of the city). There might be a few flying around the studio right now. Thanks again NYCDFF, catch you next year.