Each year, SVA’s MPS Branding program (chaired by designer, author and Design Matters podcast host Debbie Millman) offers an annual course called the Honors Branding Project, wherein a select group of students work closely with faculty and a client partner to reimagine a well-known brand’s visual identity. Such real-world projects have included work for The Museum of Modern Art, The Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, Performance Space 122 and The Writers Lab.

Though these projects typically include just faculty and MPS Branding students in their final semester, the department’s latest collaboration, with the Sundance Institute, was much larger and more ambitious in scale, and required the support of a select group of program alumni. It initially began in the summer of 2020, led by faculty members Dr. Tom Guarriello, Mark Kingsley and Melinda Welch, and was recently completed, with the final design direction created by Saloni Soni (MPS 2014 Branding), after months of close collaboration with the Sundance team and The-Collaboratory, a third-party research group. The intelligence, artistry and dedicated efforts of this combined group of alumni, faculty and students resulted in a rebrand that made its real-world debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and can already be seen on their website and across their cross-platform branding.

Sundance’s new visual identity, which includes merchandise, logos and other various graphics—posters, web and mobile designs—was built upon an ancient realization: locating one’s place on Earth may have begun with the simple act of inserting a stick into the ground and watching its cast shadow move with the sun. With close observation, time, date and the angle of the sun combine to pinpoint one’s position, to define “here.” This idea is especially relevant to the Sundance Institute’s continuing mission to discover and promote the work of up-and-coming artists. Regardless of media or background, the goal is to bring exceptional work into the here and now.

The project was a massive endeavor and a large group of MPS Branding alumni contributed, including Archie Bell (2013), Allison Braund-Harris (2015), Randy Gregory (2013), Steph Millar (2017), Dan Onufrishyn (2013) and Kim Weiner (2015). Participating students included Kristen Branch, Chelsea Carlson, Courtney Duggan, Celine Han, Ryan Nguyen and Emelil Walter. A sampling of the team’s work appears below.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival will run virtually from Thursday, January 20, through Sunday, January 30, and it will be impossible to interact with it, in any capacity, without seeing this vibrant and distinct visual branding identity wherever you look.

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