Screen time gets a bad rap these days – but some screens can give back more than they take away, as Brooklyn Film Festival’s new branding makes clear.

Developed by Otherway’s New York office, the positioning and identity of the festival’s 28th edition are based around the idea that good screen time exists if it involves coming together physically around cinema.

The visual identity revolves around sturdy, squashed letterforms that come in two type treatment options: one regular and the other ‘cinematic’, which adds a blurry, ethereal glow to the letterforms, conjuring the idea of an illuminated cinema screen. It’s a subtle yet perfectly chosen touch.

The robust typography is paired with eye-catching colour palettes and playful 3D icons, which ladder back into the loud energy of the digital space the team were looking to disrupt. “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.”

The visual design is complemented by a verbal identity offering a “rallying cry for real cinema”, according to Otherway, plus sonic branding created in collaboration with Klong that the agency describes as “glitchy, sharp, and attention-grabbing”, which appears in the festival trailer.

All of the elements come together in the festival launch campaign called Welcome to Good Screen Time, which Brooklyn Film Festival executive director Marco Ursino says “captures everything we stand for: purposeful, powerful cinema that demands your full attention”.

otherway.com