Pentagram

Tribeca Festival 2023

Brand Identity, Campaigns

Identity refresh and branding for the annual New York City cultural festival.

For the third year in a row, Pentagram has partnered with the Tribeca Festival, a platform for ground-breaking and forward thinking creative endeavors, to create a refreshed campaign identity. 

First launched in the fall of 2001 and originally known as the Tribeca Film Festival, it was created to help revitalize its namesake neighborhood following the devastation of 9/11. Co-founded by producer Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro, the Tribeca Festival has grown to become one of the most popular and prestigious cultural festivals in the U.S. Over the course of two weeks, creative voices and new perspectives are given a platform to the public across NYC through film, art, games, comedy, podcasts, shorts, immersive experiences and more.

With a request to maintain the existing campaign logo, Pentagram reinvisioned the campaign identity to reflect the festival’s purpose as the place for amplifying creative voices. This year’s identity encapsulates that amplification through playful typography that changes in scale, weight and position in space.

The typeface Druk (from Commercial Type), first introduced in the 2021 rebrand, continues to serve as the brand typeface and the core element of the dynamic identity. A typographic system alludes to the Tribeca Festival as a platform for creative people to share their work with the world. The brand employs a poppy yet pared back color palette, always used in three color pairings. The restrained usage allows the festival branding to feel both joyful and sophisticated. 

The theme of “amplification” also carries through to how the content itself is displayed. The team utilized a multilayered zoom approach to showcase imagery and film across social media, posters and various touchpoints. Merchandise features fun and exploratory applications of the amplify theme, covering everything from magnets to totes to a screen printed bandana (with a unique radial repeating graphic). A large wheat posting campaign and an array of digital banners and billboards, including a Times Square takeover, showcase the expressive identity’s ability to stand out, just like Tribeca Festival’s featured creative works.

Office
New York
Partner
Emily Oberman
Project team
Laura Berglund
Jase Hueser
Anastasia Kharchenko
Meredith Zerby
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