Afrofuturism in Film

Ideation and sketching
Afrofuturism is a cultural and philosophical phenomenon that both cherishes African culture and envisions Black futures through fantasy, magic realism and science fiction. As such, I wanted to make sure I incorporated prominent elements from African culture and give these a futuristic twist.

In my early sketches, I gravitated towards Adinkra symbols and their meanings. This approach did not generate any visually interesting results, so I started exploring a new direction, using a pattern-based font to create a patchwork of type and color. Patterns are omnipresent across African cultures, so this gave the project a more universal feel.

Color selection
I created a visual archive consisting of African artworks, fabrics, clothing and jewelry and snuck in a screenshot from Black Panther for its use of purple, an color that invokes power and royalty in African cultures.

From each image, I extracted four colors. I combined these, tested them and thinned them out to a single palette that proved usable for my final poster.

Finalization
After creating the palette, I applied it to the poster and ended up with three variants in which the dominant colors have cultural meanings: orange for earth and heritage, green for nature, purple for power.

I further applied the palettes to additional products - catalogue cover, street banner and postcards - and explored approaches to make these stand out.
For the catalogue covers, I used different tints of one color to allow the catalogues to create a patchwork of colors when being displayed and handed out.
For the street banners, I opted for a monochrome approach as well, to make the banners stand out in often visually crowded areas.
The postcards feature scenes from the movies being screened at the festival, overlaid with borders and symbols using shapes from the font used on the main poster. Colors from the palette were chosen to fit the atmosphere of the scene.