Film Screening Event

A full-length climbing film featuring women front and center, created by women, and made for everyone.

In partnership with SheJumps, REI presents Pretty Strong, a film follows eight of the world’s strongest female climbers as they explore new climbing areas, send hard projects, and push the boundaries of the sport and themselves.

From 5.13 big walls in Yosemite to 5.14 sport climbs in Mexico to V14 boulder problems in Colorado, Pretty Strong follows eight of the world’s strongest female climbers as they explore new climbing areas, send hard projects, and push the boundaries of the sport and themselves. Putting badass ladies front and center, this film is about some of the best climbers in the world—some you know, some you don’t—doing what they do best: crushing hard rock climbs. Your palms will sweat from the dizzying heights, your imagination will expand with the breathtaking landscapes, and your motivation will soar from the determination and try-hard of these strong women.

The climbers featured include Nina Williams, Katie Lambert, Daila Ojeda, Hazel Findlay, and more. Created by the all-women production team Never Not Collective, Pretty Strong is a climbing film about women, by women, and for everyone. For more information on this film, visit: Never Not Collective.

This event is a partnership to benefit REI and SheJumps. After the Pretty Strong World Premiere on January 10, 2020 at Colorado’s Boulder Theater, the film went on tour across the U.S. and abroad. The REI Flagship Store was fortunate in working with the SheJumps’s team as well as various industry vendors to sponsor and host this film screening event at the Seattle Flagship store in April 2020. Unfortunately, due to the 2020 global pandemic, this event was ultimately rescheduled/canceled, however, my design commission portion of this project was completed prior to the worldwide shutdowns.

All ticket sales for this event would have gone towards supporting SheJump's mission to motivate women and girls of all backgrounds to step out of their comfort zone in a fun, non-threatening, inclusive environment to learn outdoor skills.

Inspirations & Mood Board

The Workflow Design Process

Working in conjunction the Seattle Flagship Store’s Experiences team heading this event, I worked around various design constraints and considerations in order to adhere specifications from vendors and involved parties. There was a lot of opinions on the direction of the poster design, however, in the end, there was a clear directive in how the various teams wanted to move ahead on this project. As the commissioned designer for this project, I had to carefully balance the many ideas & opinions from all different parties all awhile instilling my own sensibilities and design principles & theories into the work.

As you can see from the images depicting some of the various revisions of the promotional poster design, the main objective was to depict a female climber, front and centered without revealing any specific person from the film itself. The Experience team at the Seattle Flagship store wanted to focus on using high contrast in both typography and color palette to emphasize the important features of the event. Through various iterations of the design project, the different elements of the poster (i.e. vendor sponsors, film’s title typography, etc.) became available and necessary to the design of the poster and handbill. Due to proper grid-design at the beginning of the project, adding in the additional elements was a relatively smooth process.

The Final Delivered Product

The scope of this project was to design both the promotional event poster and the handbills the Flagship store was handing out prior to and during the event. Due to resources constraints allowed for this project, some of the additional design elements that were originally discussed were back-burnered this time around. If allowed, I would have furthered the poster design’s sense of dimension considerably to create an almost 3D climber, rock face, and background sunrise through the use of additional shading & texture.

For more information concerning this design project, please reach out to me directly through the Contact page.