The New (old) Milwaukee Film

As a sophomore in high school English class I remember showing the dinner scene of David Lynch's Eraserhead to the confused, grossed-out faces of my classmates and knowing with certainty that this, both my love of movies and my realization that my tastes were different from anyone else's, would be a consistent experience through the remainder of my life. At art school I studied film, which led me to animation and then illustration and design. And while I still use storytelling techniques in my digital work and UX, my career definitely veered differently than I anticipated.

For one thing it eventually took me to a new city. And a new love was born.

That city was Milwaukee. A city that's generous and forgiving, allowing one to grow and thrive without unnecessary complications and pressure. It supports its own and roots for people. People who are down-to-earth and accepting, even to a weirdo like me. In Milwaukee a little ambition can go a long way. It allowed me to co-create a business where I can help tell the stories of local brands using those tools and tastes I'd developed from high school to art school to here.

So when Milwaukee Film sent an RFP to build a new website, I wanted Northern Ground to get the gig maybe more than any project in our company's run. Milwaukee carries on at the margins of the national story, steady and uncomplaining, showing up for work every day without fanfare. Cinemas are quietly doing their best to endure in a landscape reshaped by streaming, smartphones, and video games. Both are old-fashioned. Both are underdogs.

In our initial conversations, we realized that what Milwaukee Film really needed was not just a website, but a rebrand, and one that for practical reasons had to be completed before any web work could begin. This slowed the timeline while raising the stakes. What began as a comms-and-commerce effort became a deeper exercise in defining a cherished organization's identity, managing its existing reputation, and clarifying its mission.

Suddenly, the project felt personal. We had a chance to help the future of a cherished organization and a beloved city, or to get it wrong in a way that could undermine both.

The organization wasn't completely changing, just turning a corner. With all that equity built, this being the 18th year of Milwaukee Film's inception, we didn't want to completely wipe the current branding but to make it something that could unite all her iterations for the brand and be much more useful day to day as an umbrella element across all its collateral.

The previous brand used free fonts for its wordmark and was designed in 2010 back when midcentury ornaments were the rage and everyone was adding grunge to logos. That's not a criticism—the retro cues were a direct compensation other fact that we were experiencing brands primarily in the digital space for the first time. The grit made brands feel authentic. And for a blue collar city that wears its history on its sleeve, the retro mark worked and looked nice.

But the brand was a center-aligned, symmetrical decal that made it challenging to lock up in the myriad of collateral—posters, theater slides, web banners, T shirts, billboards, etc—that decorated the customer journey of a movie goer. Not to mention that few people know what Milwaukee Film is, and know the organization instead by their theaters, the Oriental and Downer, or by their annual festivals, currently the Milwaukee Film festival and the Dialogs Documentary Film Festival, or by their many programs like Black lens or Cinema Hooligante. With all of that the mark was commonly relegated to the corner of a much busier composition; the last thing you'd see.

We conducted research into the history of both film exhibition and the history of the Oriental and Downer theaters, some of which was very inspirational, some of which problematic. The preservation of these historic buildings is an important part of Milwaukee Film's mission, but people often confuse the theaters themselves with the non-profit that runs them. We needed to focus on the experience of movies in a way that was inclusive of all the work the org does to present them rather than specific venues (however gorgeous).

There was one inspiration from this research we did that became an import part of the web design later on, but more about that later.

While it looks very different, the redesign is a direct evolution of the brand rather than a replacement. The old logo focuses on the light emanating from a theater projector, and this never felt quite right to us. Why are you looking at the projector itself and not where it's projecting? Turning that around was the breakthrough we needed. Rather than the mark focusing on the organization we wanted it to focus on YOU the audience being served by that organization. The new logo portrays the projected image from the point of view of a seat in the audience, looking up in awe.

What we realized is that it's technically not cinema we're celebrating. That's part of it of course but our devices are an infinite playlist of movies just a tap away. What we're celebrating is a community of people who actively seek film, driven by curiosity, nostalgia, and a love of discovery rather than passive consumption, algorithmic convenience and streaming fatigue. We celebrate messy human curation. We celebrate coming together with other people to share an experience: the experience of watching movies the way they were meant to be seen. On the big screen.

In fact, the new brand is quite literally a call traction to enlarge your screen. Enlarge your view. Look up! This big screen is a timeline of aspect ratios showing the complete history of film. It is a portal to experiencing the past and cherished memories one day, and entirely new worlds and ideas the next. It is the place beneath which Milwaukee gathers to laugh and scream and think. It is a rainbow of hope and love and... you get the point.

It's also super practical. The nested shapes of the big screen become frames to use in lockups and promotions, allowing the new branding to be pervasive while still giving the films themselves center stage. This is the most flexible brand system we have ever conceived of, with over 50 different canonical variations to fit every need. All of which communicating that this is Milwaukee Film, the non-profit organization at the heart of the theaters, the festivals and the programs.

The color system is also meant to be flexible and usable. Inspired by the theaters, selected for maximum boldness, and bounded by ADA contrast standards, the spectrum system as a whole shows movement and diversity, but individually every color has a counterpart of suitable contrast. While the red-yellow set has been chosen for the brand's debut, new color sets are also being conceived for new seasons and initiatives because the specific colors themselves aren't the brand, the boldness and spectrum is: a spectrum of voices, eras, and perspectives side by side.

The wordmark is also an evolution of that which it replaces. Both industrial and woodsy, the solid, machine age block caps have been pushed as bold as possible to fill out the new frames that house them. Bold enough for themselves to be used as frames for cinematic images.

We pitched the new brand to the leadership of Milwaukee Film and received an overwhelmingly positive response. Steve Laughlin, founder of Laughlin Constable, who sits on the Board of Milwaukee Film, called it "world class" and the positive response was echoed by the rest of the board and the members who support the organization. Change is always risky, and people build relationships with the totems of things they love in ways that have nothing to do with practicality or shifting communication strategies. We hope all of Milwaukee will learn to accept and love the new brand despite how boldly different it is.

With the rebranding work completed, the work on the web could then begin. It would take a second article as long or longer, to explain the discovery process we went through, the objectives and ambitions of the new site structure and content, and all the very deliberate decisions we made during UX, design and build. The number one goal was to make it easy to know films are playing, and to bring those films to life. The secondary goal was to encourage membership and support and all of the passionate people and companies of Milwaukee who nurture and advocate for it. A third goal was to clarify what Milwaukee Film is, what it stands for and how it is working hard every day to pursue those efforts.

The one inspiration of our historical research that became a cornerstone of the new site design were the huge typographic signs that used to be plastered all over the facades of the theaters. Milwaukee Film is, after all, in the business of exhibition. We want the site to bark and bally hoo to passersby to step in out of the cold, take a load off, and experience worlds of wonder and imagination on the biggest screen in town.

The site just launched and is only getting started. The new ticketing system seems to be running well. People are discovering films through it that wouldn't have before, and we're excited to see the creative staff at Milwaukee Film fill it up and bring it to life. The reviews on Reddit are mixed, as you'd expect for something new and different. But just as I found myself all those years ago standing in front of class of confused and weirded out students watching David Lynch, I realized this project was so important to me because it's a chance to celebrate the weird, the risky, and the unexpected, the impulses that first drew me to movies in the first place and the things today I love about design.