The Atlantic Fest
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Broadcast Package
An Emmy-winning broadcast design system for The Atlantic Fest with 500+ deliverables built in five weeks to modernize a legacy media brand.
The Atlantic
5 weeks
The Atlantic Fest's refresh marked a major shift for one of America’s most legacy-driven media brands. Known for its tangible, paper-based history and intellectual authority, The Atlantic was expanding its marquee festival into a fully digital, seven-day experience. The challenge was to translate a 164-year-old editorial institution, rooted in print, ideas, and physical presence, into a dynamic, screen-native visual system that could live across broadcast, streaming, and virtual environments.
With only five weeks from kickoff to launch, we were tasked with designing and delivering more than 500 assets, including broadcast opens, interstitials, transitions, lower thirds, segment packages, and digital venue graphics, while honoring the brand’s credibility and elevating it for a modern audience. The core problem: how do you make “ideas” cinematic, cohesive, and scalable at speed without diluting one of the most established brands in journalism?
We approached Atlantic Fest not as a collection of deliverables, but as a scalable visual system.
At the center was a simple idea: make thinking feel dimensional. We translated The Atlantic’s editorial authority into a cinematic language via elevated typography, intentional pacing, restrained motion, and spatial depth that suggested ideas unfolding in real time. The goal wasn’t spectacle. It was clarity, confidence, and intellectual energy.
To support 500+ deliverables across seven days of programming, we built a modular motion toolkit. Flexible grids, typography systems, color hierarchies, and animation behaviors were designed to adapt seamlessly across broadcast opens, segment packages, lower thirds, transitions, and on-site venues. Every asset pulled from the same core system, ensuring cohesion and flexibility.
Speed was critical. With a five-week runway, we streamlined workflows, templated intelligently, and created repeatable frameworks that empowered the broader team to produce efficiently without sacrificing craft. This allowed us to maintain brand integrity while meeting aggressive production demands.
The result was a fully realized broadcast ecosystem that honored The Atlantic’s legacy while confidently modernizing it. This approach earned two Emmy Awards.
