To mark the 60th anniversary of the Festival the President Marco Solari and the Artistic Director Frédéric Maire appointed the London agency Jannuzzi Smith with the task of reinvigorating the Festival’s visual identity. The black on yellow leopard pattern – for many years the symbol of the Festival – will remain a core element, but it has been redesigned to provide a more modern and flexible implementation. The roll-out of the identity will be phased over the next couple of years, enabling the Festival to adjust to the demands of today’s media landscape in a cost-effective manner. The re-branding exercise included devising a shorter and more ‘international’ name for the Festival, a new logotype and a new typeface, which will collectively underpin the organisation’s evolving communication requirements: from marketing and advertising, to conventional and online publishing.

The new leopard is perhaps the most significant change: in the words of Festival Director Frédéric Maire ‘the leopard is finally able to move on our screens’. To do so Jannuzzi Smith directed specialist animal photographer Tim Flach and film production company Between the Eyes to photograph and film a real leopard, ‘Chota’. Chota lives in a zoological sanctuary in the Oxfordshire countryside. Blind at birth, she was rejected by her mother, but under the care of a watchful keeper she regained her sight and now thrives: by turn playful and dangerous; always elegant.

She is the Festival’s new symbol and will appear everywhere from street furniture to merchandising, but most importantly she will enliven the big screen in Locarno’s main square – the Piazza Grande, where 10,000 viewers congregate each night during the festival – heralding a newdecade for the Festival del film Locarno.