Lionsgate is the name of an entertainment business, which was established in 1997 in Canada and today operates also in the United States. The company is known mainly for the production of films and is one of the most successful representatives of its segment in North America.
Lionsgate Entertainment Corporation is a Canadian-American media company based in Vancouver that, before its move to California, was considered the most successful North American film studio outside of Los Angeles.
The company was founded in 1976 by director Robert Altman, who named it after the bridge that connected two Vancouver neighborhoods.In 1981, Altman parted ways with his company, which at the time was engaged in the distribution of European independent cinema in the U.S. and Canada. Lionsgate was taken over by the Cinépix Film Properties Inc. distribution group, where it remained until the end of the 1990s.
In 1997 the company was acquired by Frank Giustra, owner of the North Shore recording studio and Mandalay Television.In 2006 the company name was shortened to Lionsgate.
What is Lionsgate?
Lionsgate is a movie production company from North America, which was established at the end of the 1990s, and by today has grown into one of the segment’s leaders not only in its region but all over the globe. Today Lionsgate specializes not only in movie production, but also in television programming, and digital distribution.
Originally, Lionsgate went by Cinepix. That’s the name they used on their first logo. It looked like a wide blue hexagon with this name written in yellow across its whole width (in addition to a small white ‘inc’ part on the end).
The 1969 logo was a modernist solution. It depicted a letter C, but organized as if a sheet of metal curved into the form that looks like C at a perspective. It was mostly white but had black elements made from horizontal lines of varying width.
Then, they introduced this one. The logo is divided into two levels. The top one is occupied by the writing saying ‘C//FP’ on the right, as well as many-tailed banner with a Canadian maple leaf and a French lily inside it. The bottom layer was solely occupied by the word ‘Distribution’. All parts were either black or white.
This short-lived logo had a similar idea. Its right part held the acronym CFP, while the left section depicted a white maple leaf on the black background and a black lily fused into one object. All the black parts looked as if they were dead LED lights.
This one simply said ‘CFP Distribution’ in two lines. The acronym above used bold, big letters with diagonal cuts in many places. The word below was, by contrast, the mundane sans-serif writing.
For this emblem, they followed a similar logic, but the wordmark was instead ‘Cinepix inc. Distribution’ divided between two layers. Both used a typical serif font, and they were also divided by a single horizontal line.
This one was just the CFP acronym written in grotesque black letters. They seemed as if taken from the comic books, and it wasn’t an altogether bad decision.
By 1997, they’ve already been renamed to Lionsgate, hence the new logo. There were three parts of the same ‘Lions Gate Films’ wordmark written in three layers, each new one a bit to the left from the old one. In the remaining space, they put a lion’s silhouette sprinkled with many little stars.
The very bottom of the logo was decorated by ‘Lions Gate Entertainment Company’.
The 2004 hosted both the acronym of the company (LGF), and its translation beneath – ‘Lions Gate Films’. That translation was put into two lines. As a result, there were three lines in total throughout the logo, and each was separated from the other by a horizontal line.
The Lionsgate logo, designed by Tim Palen, is minimalist and laconic, it shows the professional confident company, which releases high-quality movies, popular all over the globe.
The Lionsgate logo is composed of a wordmark in all capitals. The lettering is exe-cuted in a sans-serif typeface, which combines three different fonts: Avant-Garde, Gill Sans, and Vonness.
The letters are well-balanced and evoke a sense of stability and harmony. The only unique detail of the nameplate is its letter “E”, whose horizontal bars are cut in the shape of the arch.
When used in typography and on websites, LionsGate uses a monochrome palette, which emphasizes the company’s power and authority. But in the studio’s movies, there is an animated version of the logo, where the cloudy background can gain dif-ferent shades, as well as three-dimensional lettering of the LionsGate logotype.
The Lionsgate logo looks modern and strong. It evokes a sense of professionalism and reliability and shows the company as the one that values quality.
The heavy stable lettering from the primary badge of the Lionsgate studio is set in the uppercase of a modern geometric sans-serif typeface, which looks very brutal and confident. The closest fonts to the one, used in this insignia, are, probably, Rebelton Medium, or Conneqt Bold, with clean contours of the characters and straight cuts of the lines.
As for the color palette of the Lionsgate visual identity, it is based on the simple minimalistic black-and-white color palette, which is a timeless option for any company or occasion. The logo in black looks professional and evokes a sense of excellence and finesse.