Team’s Visual Identity for “Playback: The Brooklyn Watch Party”

This November 6–7, the inaugural Playback: The Brooklyn Watch Party will introduce a new style of film festival to New York City, with screenings supported by cast reunions, DJ sets, talkbacks, a block party, and more. Presented in partnership with BAM, hosted by Spike Lee, and featuring a slate curated by Questlove, Bryan Stevenson, and John Turturro, the festival was created by Clara Wu Tsai and Nicholas Ma. To unify such an expansive cultural presence, the festival organizers looked to Team, the Dumbo-based independent strategy and design studio.

Team’s prolific body of work encompasses cultural institutions—including the CFDA Fashion Awards, The Bronx Museum, and Independent art fair—as well as powerhouse global corporations like Pfizer and nonprofit organizations like Children’s Hospital Association. “We don’t decorate. Everything is based in strategy,” John Clark, Team co-founder and executive creative director, tells Surface. “For corporate clients, what we create is beautiful, but at the same time there’s real rigor and meaning behind it to push business goals forward. It’s the same with art and culture institutions. They understand our work is tied to fundraising.”

Clark and co-founder and executive creative director Amy Globus connected with Ma, who was drawn to Team’s inherently Brooklyn identity. Long before Playback had programming, it began with a naming session. “We asked, ‘What is the thing you are trying to create and why are you trying to create it?’” says Globus. “Everybody had a different idea.” Ultimately, however, everyone recognized that Brooklyn has an outsized influence on global culture but there hasn’t been a film festival there to date.

“Our creative process for the brand was a lot about looking at stimulus,” Clark says. “Both BAM and the festival team brought a lot of stimulus to the conversation. Brooklyn has this unmistakable energy and this creative spirit but everyone has their own version of it. We had to ask, ‘What is the representation of the festival going to be?’ It’s a different kind of film festival. It’s a watch party. We wanted to balance that cinematic heritage with contemporary culture.”

Drawing on these insights, Team began to design the visual identity. The studio partnered with Brooklyn-based typeface designer Virgile Flores. The result is a bold, expressive visual language that taps into ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia yet feels of the moment. “We wanted Playback to own one color,” Globus says. This bright yellow was layered into a black and white palette with an undeniable filmic feel. The font is responsive and reconfigures with each use.

Team blended references, like Lee’s film Crooklyn (which will play at the Howard Gilman Opera House on November 6), with sensations familiar to everyone in the borough—sitting on a stoop, projecting a film in a Brooklyn backyard. “There is no shortage of film festivals in New York City, but this is a cultural festival,” Clark says. “I hope that’s reflected in the design.”

Beyond Playback, Team is carefully exploring opportunities and cautiously expanding. “We ask ourselves, ‘Which projects do we want to take on? What’s a field we’ve never worked in before?’ It’s never about one thing, whether it’s science or the arts,” Clark says. Globus attributes this process to their love of learning. Ultimately, process defines their practice twofold—as they push corporate clients in pioneering directions and anchor cultural clients in tactile results.