Art direction and environmental design for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival — a bold, gradient-driven identity that took over Park City, Utah across every surface, banner, venue, and screen from January 22 to February 1.
The 2026 festival identity centres on a generative gradient system — a single circular sun motif that shifts through an infinite range of colour combinations across every banner, poster, and venue sign. No two colour pairings are identical, yet the system reads as unmistakably coherent. The black typography band anchors each variation, ensuring legibility across every gradient.
The identity extended seamlessly into digital and broadcast contexts — event slides, screening introductions, and projection graphics all carried the gradient sun system onto screens throughout the festival venues.
The gradient motion system meant that on screen, the sun could pulse, shift, and animate while always remaining recognisably Sundance 2026 — a living identity that moved with the energy of the festival itself.
The Sundance Film Festival is one of the most celebrated independent film festivals in the world — and its visual identity has to work everywhere simultaneously. From a 3-inch badge to a 30-foot building wrap. From a phone screen to a projection wall. From daylight to midnight.
The 2026 brief called for a system that could scale infinitely, remain coherent across dozens of colourways, and capture the particular energy of Park City in January — the cold air, the mountain light, the electric excitement of independent cinema.
The solution: a single sun circle motif rendered through an infinite gradient system. Every banner is unique. Every venue has its own colourway. But every piece is unmistakably the same festival.