Poster designs for Daughters of the Forest. A story of entanglements: between humans and mushrooms; the visible and the invisible; generational knowledge and modern science. This sci-fi documentary invites us to reconsider the experiences of both human and non-human inhabitants of our world.

Poster for the feature documentary The Arc of Oblivion directed by Ian Cheney and produced by Sandbox Films. The typeface used was a beta version of HB Hue, lovingly given by Berton Hasebe in 2023.

Poster for the feature documentary Observer directed by Ian Cheney, anchored by the typeface Herbus.

Film posters for the feature documentary Shelf Life – observing the parallels of the cheese aging process and the human experience of growing old.

Made by Reuben & Co., An Exercise in Perspective is an experimental documentary and fundraising film, which follows the story of blind runner Phil Harrison.

Born fully sighted, Phil has lost eyesight from two unfortunate moments – an injury to his left eye as a teenager, compounded by a cancer diagnosis in his right eye when he turned 60. He now has less than 5% vision, only afforded to him with an artificial iris.

Many people could become reserved after such bad luck – Phil has decided to run.

In 2026 he will run his first ever marathon, the London Marathon, raising money for the UK sight loss charity, RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People).

As the frontman of infamous punk band Social Security he has always been defiant and young-at-heart. The band provide the perfect soundtrack to his story.

Immersive, mixed-media and a DIY project – the documentary gives a perceptual insight into Phil’s excitable, scrappy and inspirational spirit.

The title uses Optician Sans. Additional fonts used include FF Dynamoe and Scratch. Tiresias (not shown) is used for closed captions and subtitling.

Title: Optician Sans

Animated typeface: Ransom

From Patrick Adcock:

Cruising Speed by William F. Buckley, Jr. is a diary-style reflection chronicling a week in the life of the notable conservative writer and commentator from November 30 to December 6, 1970. Set against a backdrop of significant historical events, including the ongoing Vietnam War and the political climate of Nixon's presidency, Buckley provides insight into his multifaceted life as an author, editor, and television personality.

The jacket of the first edition by Putnam Books was designed by Jim O’Bryan of Ultra Arts, Inc., using Benguiat Caslon.

Para from Rellence was used for the visual identity of Vor dem Knall, a documentary about the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. The typeface gives the project a sharp and contemporary tone that fits the film’s focus on political tension and civic atmosphere.

From The Brand Identity:

The film premiered on April 3rd 2018. Designer Maurice Másson [a.k.a. Maurice Schilling] created the visual identity for the film, which includes posters, title sequences and closing credits.

The 20-minute documentary In Search of a Landscape follows visual artist Chrystel Lebas who engages in long-term projects involving photography, sound, and video. Her work documents and reveals changes in nature driven by ecological and anthropological interactions.

Starting from a 1723 map, she explores the territory surrounding the Hofgestüt complex in Bleesern, reflecting on its history, the challenges of preserving the former court stud farm as a monument, and the ambitious renovation project led by the local community. The initiative aims to transform the site into a public hub for nature, agriculture, and culture.

The film was by created by Grupppo in collaboration with the Passage artist-in-residence program and produced by Förderverein Hofgestüt Bleesern e.V. It premiered in Bleesern—where it was filmed—on the occasion of Tag des offenen Denkmals. The film’s title and poster was typeset in HAL Timezone, its subtitles in HAL Timezone Mono, both published by HAL Typefaces. The film can be viewed on Grupppo’s website.

Amsterdam-based graphic and type designer Jan Egbers used various weights of the variable font Tonka (designed by Céline Hurka and Huw D. Williams) for the movie poster, titles and credits of Hotel Mokum. The film is a documentary about the squatting movement in Amsterdam and was directed and shown during IDFA Amsterdam by Yannesh Meijman in 2023.

From IMDb:

Hotel Mokum is a docu fiction about a collective that squatted the abandoned Hotel Marnix in the heart of Amsterdam on October 16th, 2021. Over six weeks the collective transformed the hotel into a home, a self-proclaimed free space and an oasis in a city smothered by hypergentrification. At the height of its popularity, Hotel Mokum got evicted under the guise of fire safety. The story of Hotel Mokum is rooted in protest: against both the housing and cost of living crises, as well as the criminalisation of squatting in 2010 that led to the eviction of over 300 squats in Amsterdam alone. The film combines documentary footage, archival materials and constructed scenes to create a complex and intimate portrait of a hopeful collective and the city they are working to reclaim.

The Gown and the Shipwreck (Dutch: De Jurk en het Scheepswrak) tells the story of a remarkable 17th-century dress discovered in the Palmhoutwrak, or Palmwood shipwreck, off the coast of Texel. The wreck lies in the Burgzand Noord area of the Wadden Sea, where strong currents and low visibility make diving challenging. Since its illegal retrieval in 2014 by amateur divers, the dress has attracted global attention, symbolizing both the allure and the controversy surrounding underwater archaeological treasures.

The project is multi-faceted, including a three-part documentary, a podcast series, and an interactive website where visitors can explore a virtual reconstruction of the wreck. The design of the project draws inspiration from the natural transformations objects undergo underwater, such as erosion and corrosion, which lend them authenticity and a sense of history. Even the variable font used for the project reflects this process of change over time.

To design this project, Superaarde used the typefaces Exposure (Federico Parra Barrios, 205TF) and Sharp Grotesk (Sharp Type).

Poster for Thank You Very Much, a 2023 documentary film about Andy Kaufman directed by Alex Braverman. The poster design is credited to Teddy Blanks (aka Chips.nyc)

The late 1970s movie theater feel is evoked by setting the main titles in Cooper Black paired with Harry for smaller text. The film review quotes appear to be set in Cooper BT Bold.

Tomorrow Elsewhere is a compact, experimental publication posing as a diary from a 20-year-old navigating early-2000s life in a post-Soviet city. Like its predecessor, Fragments, it continues to explore how AI-generated content can fuel narrative experimentation.

Typography here becomes emotional mimicry: each headline echoes the tone of its entry. Sometimes literally, sometimes with naive charm.

The publication features multiple display typefaces from the Typotheque foundry, with the exception of the body text, which is set in Joly Text by Léon Hugues. Given the project’s hands-on, craft-oriented nature, headlines and typographic accents were outlined and embedded as SVGs.

Putin’s Witnesses is a documentary by Russian and Ukrainian film director Vitaly Mansky. It examines the early life of Vladimir Putin and the political machine that brought him to power. It’s distributed by Aardvark Film Emporium.

No Home Movie (2015) is Chantal Akerman’s last film, focusing on conversations between the filmmaker and her mother, months before her mother’s death. Malmsten Hellberg designed the poster at the request of film distributor NonStop Entertainment in their series of films by female directors that finally get a theatrical release in Sweden, with the title set in Filosofia by Zuzana Licko, the groundbreaking Slovak-born type designer. The posters are available from Posteritati NYC.

Chantal Akerman’s D’Est (1993), a 16-mm experimental documentary film, shot in Poland, Ukraine, Russia and the former East Germany, investigates the stories of people’s lives after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Malmsten Hellberg designed the poster, another assignment for film distributor NonStop Entertainment in their series of films by female directors that finally get a theatrical release in Sweden. The title set in Grez by Ulrika Hellberg; a lo-fi, personal typeface with the the full functionality of a modern digital font. The posters are available from Posteritati NYC.

Infinite Colours is a documentary film about the fashion brand Stone Island. The film was directed by Ken-Tonio Yamamoto, with Hassan Rahim and Gustavo Eandi being responsible for the graphic design.

Stone Island presents Infinite Colours, a feature-length film directed by Ken-Tonio Yamamoto about the employee community at its headquarters in Ravarino, deep in the industrial district of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The docu-poem tells the story of Stone Island from an unparalleled perspective – by the people who make the garments themselves – conveying the spirit of continual research and experimentation that lies at the heart of the brand.

Captions, descriptive overlays, chapter titles and credits are set in Scope, Seta Reta NF and Le Mans Classic.

Iris Rachez mixed up Lilian and Tonka (both typefaces published and designed by Céline Hurka, with Tonka created in collaboration with Huw D. Williams) in her graduation thesis at ENSA Nancy. A notable detail is the use of the ornaments included in Lilian.

Iris describes the content of the publication as follows:

Les mystères de la nature, narration documentaire dans l’œuvre de Jean Painlevé & Geneviève Hamon (“The Mysteries of Nature, Documentary Narration in the Work of Jean Painlevé & Geneviève Hamon”) is a dissertation about the movies of the filmmaker and biologist Jean Painlevé and his co-director Geneviève Hamon. In their films, they use the cinema as a tool, an eye wide open to life, to reveal the mysteries of creatures that we cannot perceive but that inhabit ponds, streams, coastlines, and the ocean. Between scientific observations and sensitive ones, their work fosters a rich reflection on our relationship with animals, our environment, and reality.

Chicken and Egg Films is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. It was founded in 2005 by prize-winning documentary filmmakers Julie Parker Benello, Wendy Ettinger, and Judith Helfand with the aim of promoting women in this area of the industry. To this day, Chicken and Egg has provided over $14 million in grants to over five hundred filmmakers, both in the US and abroad.

In 2024 the organization underwent a renewal. On the programmatic side, funding and mentorship was extended to other groups underrepresented in documentary filmmaking, namely LGBTIQ+ and gender-expansive people. On the design side, Chicken and Egg was provided with the new visual identity shown in this post. It is the work of Pentagram’s London branch.

The centerpiece of the design is the pictorial logo of a hen with a counter shape in form of an egg, which leaves the question open what to look at first. The principal colors used are black, white, and a fluorescent, greenish yellow. The additional secondary color palette shows bright, friendly tones akin to the rainbow flag without mimicking it. On top of that comes a selection of two typefaces of distinct quality: Marr Sans and Cardinal Fruit.

Marr Sans Condensed Bold was chosen as top-level headline font with all-caps typesetting. The Marr Sans family was designed by Paul Barnes and Dave Foster on the basis of Scottish metal types from the 1870s, and released by Commercial Type in 2014. The typeface chosen to accompany it is Cardinal Fruit, a serifed roman of very narrow proportions. Cardinal Fruit is a variant of the larger Cardinal family designed by Jean-Baptiste Levée of Production Type. Apart from some references to the Garamond and the Granjon romans, the major inspiration for its design lies in the tight typesetting of 1980s photojournalism.

Crois pas qu’on dort, directed by Lou Marillier and Nick Walters, offers a raw and intimate look at Maysane, Leyna, and Charles-Antoine, three young Parisian athletes training for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Filmed over five years, it captures their growth, struggles, and sacrifices as they pursue their dream of representing France on the world stage. The documentary was developed and produced by Pi Studios and SRAB Films with the support of Nike.

Aletheia, in collaboration with We Are Pi, was in charge for the global visual identity of the film campaign, including the creation of a custom version of LL Ruder Plakat designed with Lineto. All other information is set in Delegate by Commercial Type.

From Creative Review:

The posters and titles designed for the documentary riff on the name of the film. The art features images of the athletes shot by Solène Gün, whose work often deals with identity and culture.

The posters and titles feature a custom version of Lineto foundry’s typeface Ruder Plakat, which was tweaked by Parisian design studio Aletheia to incorporate “varying letter widths to echo the movement and rhythm of sport as well as geometric forms as a homage to the Olympic rings”, Chant explains.

The typeface was brought to life in motion by CC Studio, where movements were designed to resemble “the transformation of the ‘awakened’ state of the athletes in the film”.

24×32 cm zine created to accompany the release of the documentary Crois pas qu'on dort (“Don’t think we’re sleeping”), directed by Lou Marillier and Nick Walters.

The film follows three young athletes—Maysane and Leyna Kamkasoumphou, and Charles-Antoine Kouakou—over their five-year journey preparing for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The publication is printed by Media Graphic Rennes, using a customized version of LL Ruder Plakat typeface (Lineto), with Delegate (Commercial Type) for text.