Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival
An annual celebration of Asia's moving image practices
In celebration of independent art and filmmaking in Asia over the last six decades, the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival, supported by CHANEL, is an annual event featuring screenings, exhibitions, performances, talks, workshops, and live acts held at M+.
To enhance the online user experience, M+ enlisted Nic Chan and Jimmy K.K. Lam from Studio Earth to redevelop the festival's website and streamline its digital content structure.
Team
Nic Chan on development, Jimmy K.K. Lam of Studio Earth on user experience and interface design, Heesun Seo of Studio Hik on festival identity design, Gemma Harrad and Ollie Rodgers of Likewise on trailer production, and the Moving Image, Digital and Editorial team at M+ on project management.
Moving Image, Digital and Editorial at M+
Chanel Kong, Cristen Tsoi, Eunice Tsang, Kitty Leung, Michael Lee, Sewon Barrera, Silke Schmickl, Ulanda Blair
Our design direction draws on an array of pre-developed graphic and typographic elements that resonate faithfully with the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival's visual identity created by Xavier Cédric.
In addition to improved visual elements and content structures, Studio Hik created a series of key visuals that viscerally reflect the 2025 festival theme, Time Will Tell.
The website allows visitors to access its primary pages, including a programme calendar, festival stories, and multimedia content that enriches the online user experience.
One of the website's most essential functions is the "Programme" page, which lists all activities and events at the festival.
Our core design principle revolves around usability and instancy, hence the introduction of primary functions such as a filter system and accordions to show and hide selected content.
Visitors can switch between "Calendar" and "Timeline" views. Where the "Calendar" view emphasises individual entries, the "Timeline" view holistically visualises overlapping activities and events.
We carefully adjusted the website's typographic hierarchy to improve legibility, accessibility, and user experience.
Visual elements such as font sizes and line spaces play a vital role in transforming text-heavy paragraphs into readable passages for articles and festival entries.
The Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival project was led by Nic Chan, with Jimmy K.K. Lam of Studio Earth, Heesun Seo of Studio Hik, Gemma Harrad and Ollie Rodgers of Likewise, and the Moving Image, Digital and Editorial team at M+.