Post Alley Film Festival

Print design & digital marketing for the re-launch of a local film festival.

Poster Design | Digital Marketing | Layout

Solo Project

Roles: Visual Designer | Art Director

Tools: Figma | Illustrator | Photoshop

Timeframe: 2 months (February – March 2023)

Overview

Create a poster to advertise the Post Alley Film Festival & drive sales of in-person tickets at the SIFF Center in Seattle.

PAFF is a Seattle film festival the curated brainchild of Virginia Bogert: award-winning director and current winner of the Seattle Mayor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film. Originally Virginia just wanted a poster. Given the goals to increase interest and sell tickets, it was clear PAFF needed a branded presence and an integrated marketing campaign in addition to classic posters.

I was happy to expand the scope of this project because it helped get the word out about women’s important contributions to art and film that deserve to be celebrated.

Print Design

Concept & Ideation

Based on past posters, Virginia wanted a poster that was cleaner with a more International style feel. Because it’s a single day event, it was important to feature the date and impart a sense of nostalgic film fun with a bold design.

The bottom right thumbnail is similar to a poster for “Affiches Américaines” my client was attached to. I included it to honor that while creating a more tailored image.

Illustration

Since Virginia wanted a bold image similar to the “Affiches Américaines” poster with a cleaner feel than the moodboard, I went with strong central image and shifted to a film strip which was more apropos to cinema. Because we needed to allude to Post Alley without confusing people about the location, I illustrated the festival title like the sign and put the date and location in bold on the bottom. The paper tear texture is a nod to paper tickets and word-of mouth marketing that Virginia liked about the inspiration poster.

Final Poster Design

Since PAFF’s main business goal was to sell as many tickets as possible, I used a QR code to drive engagement from pedestrian traffic to the SIFF ticketing page for the festival. I used a raster texture to evoke nostalgia, magenta for the film strip to celebrate female directors, and featured stills from selected entries in the film cells.

Press Checks

We used Girlie Press, a local woman-owned print shop because the PAFF’s goal is always to support women entrepreneurs. I handled the files, hand-off, and press checks to catch any previously overlooked details. The final posters hung at each SIFF location in Seattle.

Social Media Marketing

Content Strategy

PAFF had been on hiatus since 2018, so it was important to engage the film community and let them know that was still around in 2024. Next, we needed to drive traffic to the SIFF ticketing site. PAFF also needed to establish a consistent online presence while advertising films of differing genres. I used Figma to stay organized and iterate quickly.

Implementation

For $25, I purchased a local targeted Meta ad which drove traffic to the SIFF ticketing site. I used the film strip motif to feature each short in a visually consistent way, quickly creating batch iterations in Figma.

Social Media Management

To build engagement on Instagram, I added Virginia’s filmmaker connections through Seattle Women in Film, researched all of the featured directors, and tagged them in the posts with hashtags specific to the genre, style, and country of origin. I used Meta Business Suite to create consistent tailored posts and stories on Facebook and Instagram.

Results

The social campaign was so successful that PAFF oversold tickets to the event for the first time in its 12 year history. The $25 Meta ad-buy resulted in over 1000 views. In just one month, I increased PAFF’s Instagram following by 256%, boosted engagement by 827%, and expanded accounts reached by over 1525%. The festival was a hit and Virginia was thrilled at the power of our integrated ad campaign.

Printed Festival Programs

The festival programs were the final touchpoint for attendees. They would be read in low light by a potentially older audience, so fonts needed to be large and clear. I added images at Virginia’s request, and created a modular layout to maintain hierarchy and accommodate variable line lengths and awards graphics.

Key Takeaways

• Figma allowed for fast creation of template-based content

• Social strategy based on business goals can drive traffic as intended

• Press checks save time and money!