An American film officer, a Berlin committee and Hitchcock on the first night, 1951.

The Berlinale started as a political project in a divided city. Wikipedia says the festival was proposed by Oscar Martay, a film officer with the Information Service Branch of the American High Commission in West Berlin, and that a committee including members of the Senate of West Berlin and the West German film industry took the idea up on 9 October 1950. The American military administration, the same account says, provided loans for the first years.

The first edition ran from 6 to 17 June 1951. Wikipedia says it opened with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca at the Titania-Palast in Steglitz, with the open-air Waldbühne as a second venue. A West German panel handed out five Golden Bears that year, divided by category. For the next few years the public chose the winners: Wikipedia says that between 1952 and 1955 the international producers’ federation, FIAPF, did not allow jury prizes at festivals it had not accredited, so audience votes decided the bears. Accreditation came in 1956, and an international jury has awarded the Golden Bear since then.

The festival’s first director was Alfred Bauer, a film historian who ran it from 1951 to 1976. The same report said the weekly Die Zeit had published archive research into Bauer’s role in the film administration of the Nazi era. The Local reported that the festival said it would suspend the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize, created after his death in 1986, with immediate effect, and would bring in outside experts to study its own history. Wikipedia says the prize was later replaced by the Silver Bear Jury Prize.

A crisis, a new forum, a winter date and a new quarter of the city.

The festival changed its venue and shape several times in its first three decades. Wikipedia says the Zoo Palast became the main venue in 1957 and stayed so until 1999. The twentieth edition, in 1970, broke down when the jury removed Michael Verhoeven’s film o.k. from competition, other directors withdrew their films and no prizes were awarded. The festival was reorganised the next year, and Wikipedia dates the International Forum of New Cinema to 1971; it is now curated by the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art.

The calendar move came under the second director. Wikipedia says Wolf Donner succeeded Bauer in 1976, and that in 1978 the festival moved from June to February, running that year from 22 February to 5 March, a change that has lasted ever since. The same year saw the start of the European Film Market and of a children’s section that was renamed Generation in 2007. Moritz de Hadeln directed the festival from 1980 to 2001, and Wikipedia says the section first called the “Information show” was renamed Panorama in 1986.

The Berlinale moved to a new part of the city at the turn of the century. Wikipedia says the main venue shifted to Potsdamer Platz in 2000, where the Berlinale Palast now hosts the competition premieres, galas and the opening and awards ceremonies. Dieter Kosslick ran the festival from 2001 to 2019, a period in which Wikipedia dates the launch of Berlinale Talents to 2003 and the World Cinema Fund to 2004. He was followed by a pair, executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek, the first woman to lead the Berlinale, and artistic director Carlo Chatrian.

The current director was chosen in late 2023. The Film Verdict reported on 12 December 2023 that German culture minister Claudia Roth had announced Tricia Tuttle, a former director of the BFI London Film Festival, as the new director, taking over on 1 April 2024 after the supervisory board followed a selection committee’s recommendation. Roth called her “the right choice to lead the Berlinale successfully into the future”, and Tuttle described the festival as “a leader amongst A-list film festivals – welcoming and inclusive”. Wikipedia’s page on the 76th edition dates it to 12 to 22 February 2026, with Tuttle as director.

A bear from a 1932 sculpture, cast for the winners.

A music or film festival usually carries two identities at once. One is permanent: a name, a mark and a small set of colours or letterforms that stay the same from year to year and appear on the website, on signage at the site and on anything the organisers publish between editions. The other is annual: a poster, a key image or a short-lived graphic system made for a single edition and replaced when the next one is announced. The permanent mark has to sit comfortably beside each new poster without competing with it, so it is often simple, compact and reproduced in one colour, while the yearly artwork is free to change style, medium and mood entirely.

At the site itself the identity becomes practical. Wristbands and passes carry the name and the year, often in a colour that changes with each edition or ticket type so that staff can read them at a glance. Stages, screens and venues are given names that appear on maps, timetables and directional signs, and those names can outlast any single poster, becoming part of how regular visitors talk about the event. Wayfinding has to work in daylight and after dark, in crowds and at a distance, which pushes it towards large type and strong contrast. Merchandise, programmes and digital listings repeat the same elements in smaller sizes. For designers, the useful lesson is the split itself: a fixed core that builds recognition over many years, and an annual layer that gives each edition its own character and lets the event refresh itself without losing its name.

The city’s bear on the trophy and in the name.

The strongest visual constant in the festival’s story is the animal on its prizes. Wikipedia says the Golden Bear statuette is based on a bear sculpted by Renée Sintenis in 1932, and that the design draws on the bear in the Berlin coat of arms. Replicas, it says, have been cast by the Noack foundry since the third festival in 1953. That gives the festival a symbol older than the festival itself, borrowed from the city that hosts it, and it also explains why the main awards are named by metal, Golden Bear and Silver Bears, rather than by a sponsor or a person. The bears have outlasted the one award once named after a person: the Alfred Bauer Prize, given from 1987, was dropped in 2020 and, as Wikipedia records, replaced by a Silver Bear Jury Prize.

The festival name works the same way. “Berlinale” joins the city to a festival word in one short term, and Wikipedia uses it alongside the formal name, Berlin International Film Festival. The calendar has become part of the identity too: since 1978 the Berlinale has been the February festival, and its market, the European Film Market, shares those dates. The Potsdamer Platz venue, in use since 2000, gave the festival a fixed home for its premieres, galas and ceremonies.

Scale is part of the pitch. Its sections, from Forum and Panorama to Generation and Talents, each carry their own names under the festival brand.

For a design guide, the Berlinale shows how a festival can borrow its emblem from its city and keep it for decades. Compare Cannes Film Festival, whose palm is also both prize and symbol, and TIFF, a festival that grew a year-round organisation around its name. For this guide we use bear bronze, winter night and February snow with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Berlinale’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.