A page-turner: CC Studio delivers a whip-smart identity for The New York Times’ staff conference

State of The Times, an annual event hosted by the New York Times (NYT), brings together the company’s employees to celebrate their journalism, keep up with their business strategy, and offers them a chance to connect. More than just a town hall meeting, the event gets a fresh update for each edition. For 2024’s conference, Jessi Brattengeier – NYT’s Creative Director – brought in London-based CC Studio to collaborate on the identity and a motion system. Starting as they often do by casting a wide net, the studio worked quickly to understand what was and wasn’t a successful visual direction, ultimately landing on a decidedly typographic approach. “It felt natural to lean into typography, a tool which is at the very core of NYT, and one that’s utilised across all of their various platforms,” Motion Designer Ewan Leslie tells us. The direction sat well with Brattengeier as well. “Part of the challenge in working with the identity system at The Times is knowing when and how to push the brand while staying true to the tone of our quality journalism. Often, my team leans into elements like typography and colour in our brand – rather than photography or decorative visuals – because we want every element to have a purpose and be contextually honest,” she explains. The identity had to do quite a few things – it had to be flexible and exciting, be adaptable across touchpoints such as signages, merch and keynote introductions, and largely, hint at the breadth of media and content being produced by the legacy newspaper. To do all of this, the team landed on the open-book ‘X’ graphic creating a visual centrepiece, and injected it with a motion language reminiscent of “flicking through a book or a magazine,” adds Leslie. Look closely, and you’ll notice the page-turning motion being applied to the newspaper’s iconic logomark as well.