The Issues

Family, Race,
Identity

Little White Lie is a powerful documentary about dual identity, race, and family secrets. For the film’s social action campaign, the advocacy firm Picture Motion conceived the Truth Circle Game, a multi-player card game with the goal of generating deep dialogue following screenings of the film. What defines our identity, our family of origin, or the family that raises us? How do we come to terms with the mistakes of our parents? Director Lacey Schwartz discovers that answering these questions means understanding her parents’ own stories as well as her own.

Challenge

The feature documentary was produced by Truth Aid and premiered at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in July 2014. Starting in June of 2015, you could stream the film on Netflix. As it was screened at festivals and in communities across the U.S., Picture Motion led efforts to engage more people with the important themes at work in the film. We were brought in to help execute their strategies.

Create a brand that speaks in one voice across multiple aspects of the film’s marketing efforts. For the film Little White Lie and the Truth Circle game, craft an integrated campaign that unifies the project and illuminates the core film themes across print and digital.

Solution

Our process explored the themes of personal identity, family, community, and self-esteem. Mindful of the complete story the design would tell, we organized our tasks into branding, the physical card game, website UX update and design refresh for the film, and a standalone microsite designed and developed to be a completely unique experience. It was important that everything felt cohesive, but we were most mindful of crafting an action app that would compel visitors to share personal stories similar to what’s uncovered in the film.

For the branding around the film, existing assets included a logo, film stills, social graphics, and Squarespace website. We started with what was working, refined the branding, and explored opportunities to bring out the core emotions in the film. The brushstroke concept added a sense of urgency and personalization to the brand and would help us link the various elements used in the campaign strategy.

For the film’s website, we refined the site architecture, established clear calls-to-action, and designed a more complete, long-scrolling homepage.

The Game

With the Little White Lie brand refined, we had a foundation to move into branding for the game, design of the card deck, and the development of a web app for the game to be played online.

For the game, we explored several concepts and ended up on a design with bright colors and a gritty urgency. The circular logo was designed to represent people coming together to look inward and to try to form an understanding, each block moving in differently, at its own depth. The game deck was conceived with 14 cards, either fill-in-the-blank or discussion-based.