Il Cinema in Piazza is an annual open-air cinema festival held every summer in Rome. Piccolo America Foundation commissioned us to redesign the festival’s visual identity. Building on the original logo, we developed a dynamic system centered around a custom typeface—Il Cinema Sans—and a set of micro-illustrations integrated within the letterforms of the festival’s yearly logo.
To further narrate the story of this public event, we drew inspiration from street culture, incorporating visual elements reminiscent of sticker design. Every text element is defined by a bold outline, reinforcing the identity’s connection to grassroots and urban aesthetics. The typeface Neue Montreal Bold by Pangram Pangram complements Il Cinema Sans, grounding the expressive display font and bringing structure to the overall layout.
For the 2025 edition, the event poster features guest illustrator Gianluca Folì, who depicts Rome as a female profile gazing at the night sky. This artwork is brought to life through an animated version created by the festival’s in-house animation team.
The challenge for this project was to remain true to the original idea but creating a system the was easier to use and to evolve through the year.
The lower part of the typography "IN PIAZZA" remains the same accross the years, the upper part where every illustration refer to a iconic movie or series changes every year representing different object or characters each time.
Il Cinema Sans expands on the aesthetic of the original logo, evolving it into a complete typeface. It features five stylistic sets of alternate letterforms, designed to keep the identity fresh, versatile, and expressive—an essential quality for a visual system built around just movie frames, text, and a single illustration.
Each alternate set is dedicated to a specific facet of the festival: one for the series of films within a retrospective; one for special events featuring Q&A sessions with actors, directors, and other guests; and three others, each representing one of the festival’s unique venues—Monte Ciocci, the public park Cervelletta, and Piazza San Cosimato.
A key element of the identity is the bold outline applied to all text components, drawing from the bold, accessible aesthetic of street stickers. This graphic treatment not only reinforces the festival’s connection to public and urban culture but also creates a distinct visual language that stands out across different media.
The outlined typography serves as a unifying frame, allowing the identity to seamlessly coexist with both illustrated content and real movie frames. Whether paired with Gianluca Folì’s delicate illustrations or the raw energy of a film still, the outlined text anchors the composition, maintaining visual coherence while amplifying contrast and legibility.
Made at Mistaker
Illustration by Gianluca Folì
Typeface in use is Neue Montreal by Pangram Pangram