Project
Run N Gun Film Festival, 10th Anniversary
Scope
Graphic Design, Branding, Merchandise
Date
March 2025 – July 2025
Introducing Run N Gun
Run N Gun Film Festival (RNG Fest) is Vancouver’s premier 48-hour film competition, bringing together hundreds of filmmakers every year for a fast-paced, creativity-driven challenge. 2025 marked the festival’s 10th anniversary, branded as RNGX, a milestone year where the team wanted to push beyond tradition and celebrate a decade of filmmaking in a bigger, more ambitious way.
As Head of Graphics, I was tasked with developing the festival’s visual identity for its 10th anniversary, spanning both digital and physical formats. This included creating the key art and programmes for multiple screening events, building out social content, designing merchandise, and establishing a cohesive visual system that balanced the festival’s core indie energy with the polish expected for a major anniversary year.
Anniversary Branding
For RNGX, the festival directors wanted the 10th anniversary branding to feel bold, simple, and fun, while staying true to Run N Gun’s roots. The team had the idea of theming The Main Event around a 10-year old's birthday party, so we wanted to loosely follow that aesthetic for the anniversary branding, evoking a youthful, celebratory feeling while still carrying festival’s signature edge.
Regarding the logo itself, the only strict requirement was to incorporate an “X” in the festival’s signature hot pink. This served both as a reference to the 10th anniversary and a connection to Run N Gun’s existing visual identity. A simpler one-colour logo variation was also created to allow for versatility in print assets or in contexts where a full-colour version would compete with other design elements.
This visual style defined much of the early promotional material. It established the tone without overshadowing the main event itself, where the branding would evolve and expand into something more polished and cinematic.
RNGX — The Main Event
The Main Event is the flagship occasion, with this year being the largest in the festival’s history, culminating in a sold-out crowd at Vancouver’s iconic Orpheum Theatre. This final showcase features the festival’s top 40 films, selected from over 150 submissions. For this milestone, we wanted to take the existing RNGX branding and elevate it into something spectacular that encapsulated the heart of Run N Gun. Bold, maximalist, and unapologetically in-your-face.
After exploring several directions, we landed on a shiny graffiti-style poster that captured the festival's raw, indie-film passion, combined with the youthful energy and excitement of a birthday bash. This design served as the foundation for The Main Event’s visual identity, reflecting both the grit and celebration that define Run N Gun’s spirit.
Key Art
Social Content Sample
Programme
Unused Concepts
Before settling on the approved key art shown above, these two work-in-progress posters were also presented as possible options. Ultimately, we decided not to move forward with them as they didn’t strike the right balance between celebratory, simple, and edgy. When there isn’t a strict end goal for a visual theme, I believe exploring a wide variety of concepts is essential as it helps identify what doesn’t work while preserving elements that do.
Rio Screenings
Leading up to The Main Event, Run N Gun hosted three nights of pre-screenings at Vancouver’s Rio Theatre, showcasing all submitted films that didn’t make it into the top 40. With over 100 films featured across the three nights, these screenings gave every participating filmmaker the chance to have their work shown on the big screen.
Each night of the Rio Screenings followed a different theme, loosely organized by tone and style. Monday focused on classic, fun, and lighthearted films. Tuesday was reserved for the strange, experimental, and “stoner” films. Wednesday closed out the series with the darker, bloodier, and more serious entries.
While each screening night needed its own distinct identity, all six events (two per night) had to feel stylistically connected as part of the broader Run N Gun brand. To achieve this, each night’s pair of events shared a colour palette, helping visually group them together while maintaining a unified tone. Custom key art was created for every screening, designed to reflect each night’s theme without straying from the overall festival aesthetic.
Pre-Season Kickoff Party
Merchandise Design
RNGX’s merch lineup was a mix of practical branding and… absolute insanity. Unlike my usual design work, the merch for this year leaned heavily into absurdism and anti-design, reflecting the festival’s irreverent and light-hearted attitude.
The main merchandise collection included a white t-shirt and a classic dad hat, both featuring a simplified version of the Run N Gun logo. This modified version was created specifically for merch, allowing us to maintain brand recognition without fully spelling out “Run N Gun” on clothing—something we deliberately avoided to prevent people from ending up in any awkward situations while wearing festival-branded apparel at an airport.
We also produced a t-shirt reading “Can you fix ME in post?” which was a simple, self-aware joke that quickly became a crowd favourite.
To top it off, at the events, attendees could grab a variety of free buttons, each featuring completely unserious graphics and phrases related (sometimes loosely) to the festival. These were intentionally designed as a mixed bag, ranging from cringey "filmmaker jokes" to completely absurd concepts. The copy itself came directly from the festival directors, leaving me free to focus on creating bold, offbeat visuals without worrying about staying strictly on-brand. These buttons certainly do not feature the sort of graphics you would have at a standard corporate event, but they were absolutely adored by everyone at the festival for the exact reason. Know your audience!
