7 Ways Design Helps Your Film Get Noticed (and Funded)
As a filmmaker, you probably care deeply about visibility, buzz, and making a strong first impression. And of course — about selling your film
Graphic designers are usually brought in late to create a poster. Visual design becomes an afterthought, but it could be so much more. Ideally, a designer is your creative partner, someone who helps shape how your film is seen from the very beginning. There are countless ways your film can meet its audience, and strong, well-crafted visuals are one of the fastest.
Whether you’re submitting to festivals, pitching to investors, or building buzz online, here are seven ways design can help your film get the attention it deserves.
1. Poster
You probably expected poster design to be on this list, so let’s get the obvious out of the way. A poster is often the first impression your film makes. Whether it’s hanging on a wall or scrolling by as a thumbnail in someone’s feed, it needs to work instantly.
To make a strong impression, one that signals quality, skip the Canva templates, AI-generated art, or quickly thrown-together layouts with free fonts. You need a professionally designed poster that’s conceptually smart and visually clear. It should immediately communicate the genre, tone, and spark curiosity. Most of all, it should be memorable. There are endless stylistic directions you can take, but the biggest mistake is being generic or forgettable.
If you have big ambitions (and you should), poster design shouldn’t be the end of your marketing efforts. It can be the starting point for branding your entire film. Everything else we’ll explore here can grow from that visual foundation.
2. Social Media Toolkit
Whether you create a dedicated Instagram, Facebook, Threads, or TikTok profile for your film — or post from your personal account as a filmmaker — your project needs a social media presence. If you already have an audience, great, you don’t need to start from scratch. But either way, showing up online is essential for building buzz, connecting with viewers, and giving your film a public face.
Many filmmakers post their poster once or twice and call it a day. But social media isn’t a billboard — it’s a conversation. If you want people to notice your film, you need a steady stream of visuals that keep the momentum going. Depending on the project, visuals might include:
Countdown graphics (“3 Days Until Premiere!”)
Quote cards (featuring lines from the film, styled in your visual language)
Behind-the-scenes photos with branded overlays
Character cards — for a short film about a football team, I designed collectible-style player cards for each cast member. This gave everyone in the team something personal to share on their own social media.
There’s a classic marketing rule of seven: people need to see a brand’s message at least seven times before they take an action. So don’t worry about “doing too much” on social media. Current algorithms make it hard for posts to reach your audience organically, so every extra effort helps.
Social media runs on visuals, and with a bit of planning, your film can reach new eyeballs again and again. You don’t need to constantly invent new content — just create a smart, well-designed batch of visuals that reflect your film’s tone and can be reused across platforms.
Small ideas like these can get people involved, make your film feel bigger, and give others a clear reason to share it.
3. A Pitch Deck
A pitch deck (also called a lookbook) is one of the most powerful tools you have for presenting your film before it even exists. Whether you're applying to labs, pitching to funders, or trying to get producers on board, it shows that you’ve got a clear vision and that you’re serious. The chances of a decision-maker investing hours into reading your script are quite low, but a 15-slide pitch deck is something they can scroll through.
A great pitch deck isn’t just about pretty pages. It should communicate the feeling of your film and pull people in emotionally and visually. Most decks include these elements:
Title and logline
Synopsis
Director’s statement
Visual references or moodboards
Character descriptions
Cast ideas or tone comparisons
Team bios
Audience and festival strategy
The most important thing is that it feels cohesive and intentional — and this is where design makes a big difference. It’s not just about choosing nice images or creating atmosphere, but also about typography, structure, and pacing. A weak layout or bad type choices can easily ruin the impression of professionalism.
A good designer also finds the right balance between visuals and text. Because nothing drains your reader faster than dense paragraphs on every slide. Everyone’s short on time, and whoever is reading your pitch deck has probably seen a hundred others — so first impressions matter.
If your deck looks bad, people might assume your film will be too. A well-designed pitch deck makes your project feel real, credible, and worth investing in.
4. Merchandise
Think about your film as something that can be marketed, even in small, fun ways. This can lead you to ideas for merchandise, either made just for your team or for your audience.
Merch can include t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, enamel pins, stickers… whatever makes sense and connects to the tone or theme of your film. It’s a fun way to build shareability and recognition. Plus, we’re living so much in the digital world — swiping, scrolling, tapping — that physical objects can create moments of real-world delight.
5. Teaser Poster
Teaser posters aren’t just for Hollywood blockbusters — your indie short can benefit from early buzz too, even before a single frame is shot.
A teaser can be purely typographic (with a custom, memorable title design), abstract, or illustrated. It’s totally fine if you don’t have any photography yet, the lack of visual assets means designers can get really creative and think conceptually. The goal here is to build suspense and spark curiosity by offering a glimpse of the film's concept, characters, or atmosphere.
Think of it as a mini campaign. One striking teaser (or maybe a series of posters) gives you something to share early on. It’s a way to start shaping your film’s identity and building an audience from day one. Later, your official poster will hopefully feel like a natural continuation to your teaser design, not something completely new and unrelated.
6. Title Design
You’ve probably spent a lot of time thinking about your film’s title. As you should — titles matter. But how that title looks visually is just as important. Think of it as the logo for your film.
This is an asset you’ll reuse across everything — poster, teaser, pitch deck, social posts, even in the film itself. A well-crafted title treatment gives your project a recognizable visual identity and it’s the simplest way to tie all your materials together.
Designing it isn’t just about picking a font (doing that would make Ryan Gosling really sad). It should reflect your film’s mood, genre, and tone in a way that feels both intentional and distinctive. Titles can be purely typographic, or feature visual elements that offer a more literal interpretation of the film.
Some title designs have become iconic on their own — Jurassic Park, The Godfather, Jaws... Sure, those films would’ve been just as successful even with simple Helvetica titles, but their designs became part of the storytelling and legacy. Yours can too — even on a small scale.
7. A Simple Website
Having a website for your film isn’t old-fashioned — it’s a signal that you’re professional and serious about your project. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive; a clean, one-page site can do the job. Website builders today offer all the tools you need without hiring a developer.
A website gives you a central place to point people to — festivals, journalists, funders, future collaborators. Somewhere they can quickly find info about the film, watch the trailer, read the synopsis, and see key visuals (like the poster or stills). You can also include festival dates, press quotes, contact info, and a short director’s statement.
Think of it like a digital home for your film. Unlike social media, where things get buried in the feed (and you never know when a platform might disappear), a website gives you full control over how your film is presented — and that can make a big difference.
Conclusion
Your film will probably have an online presence for many years, across multiple platforms. Maybe you’ll start with a crowdfunding campaign on Seed&Spark or Kickstarter, set up profiles on social media, later launch a website, and eventually create an IMDb page.
Whatever you choose to do, having a deliberate visual presence across all touch-points from day one can make all the difference in how your project is perceived and help you connect with the right people. Design doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated, but it should always be thoughtful.
If any of this sounds like something you'd want for your next film, shoot me an email and let’s talk!
And if you’re curious to learn more about my design process, check this article.