In the age of TikTok brainrot and influencer overload, it's easy to feel adverse to screen time, but before isolating digital spaces became the norm, screen time was all about community. Capturing the spirit of pre-social media entertainment, the Brooklyn Film Festival is inviting audiences to embrace the charm of the cinema screen to celebrate the uniting power of film.
While there's no formula for creating impactful branding, Brooklyn Film Festival's new visual identity is a prime example of how thoughtful design can authentically resonate with audiences. With a bright colour palette, bold typography and a strong verbal identity, the film festival's branding demonstrates how graphic visuals with a cinematic touch can create a big impact.
Created by design studio Otherway, Brooklyn Film Festival's new visual identity, titled 'Welcome to Good Screen Time', introduces the festival as a cure to digital saturation, suggesting that not all screen time is inherently bad. Playfully repurposing common phrases seen across social media, the visual identity carries a familiarity, cheekily inverting popular rhetoric to rewrite the script on negative doomscrolling.
The new identity's motion design reflects the scrolling and swiping UI of social media, giving it a dynamic appeal that effortlessly transfers to the big screen. With an immersive sonic language created in collaboration with Klong, the sound design echoes familiar "glitchy, sharp, and attention-grabbing" tones used in stereotypical 'tech' sound design, bringing a multisensuous cinematic appeal to the visual identity.
"Our ambition was simple: take the visual noise of the scroll and flip it into something intentional," says Javi Passerieu, president of Otherway US. "The identity is built to feel as alive and reactive as the internet. It’s bold, human, and a bit subversive - just like the film's BFF champions.”
“Otherway didn’t just give us a new campaign, they gave us a new lens," adds Marco Ursino, Executive Director of Brooklyn Film Festival. "In a world full of distractions, they helped us reframe the festival as something worth stopping for. And most importantly, it’s true to who we are.”
For more design inspiration, check out the best movie posters of all time or take a look at Soho Rep theatre's bold poster art.
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