Combust Films — Branding

Los Angeles-based Combust Films tell compelling and uplifting stories through film, television and online content. Their highly energetic name offered the truly tantalising opportunity to create a powerful, meaningful icon to boldly represent their brand.

The very moment of combustion is a highly active one that naturally elicits an exclamative and emotional response. With a mission to tell emotionally charged and uplifting stories, this moment perfectly represents the surprising and evocative effect Combust Films hope their stories will have on their audience. Their brand positioning and brand identity needed to convey all of this meaning simply, quickly and effectively.

The visual stories they tell elicit deep, visceral responses of all kinds in their viewers imaginations. To capture this spark of inspiration, the brand was positioned as creating ‘Films to Fire the Mind’.

A powerful icon was created to represent this idea, conveying meaning very quickly and with very little. By combining two ubiquitous and recognisable punctuation marks, immediacy and meaning can be instantly articulated, imbued and understood.

The common exclamation point is hijacked, its dot being replaced by a little asterisk explosion. Combined as one, great energy and deeper meaning has been poured into one simple, new typographic mark. Called the ‘Interrobust’, it is a powerful symbol that stands for what Combust Films is all about.

Playful brand elements of bold typography, a simple colour palette and the ‘Interrobust’ in action makes for a lively brand identity that’s full of personality and emotion. To get the fledgling production company off the ground, a whole host of launch collateral and merchandise was created, ready to go into goodie bags for film industry folk to hoover up and enjoy.