Brooklyn Museum × Spike Lee
In preparation for Spike Lee’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, I had the opportunity to design the capsule collection for the museum shop. This was my second time working with the museum and my fifth or so time working with Spike, so collaborating with both of them was an unforgettable experience. ¶ The exhibition highlights the throughlines of his life and oeuvre—Black history and culture, Brooklyn, sports, music, cinema history, and family—are explored with more than 450 works drawn from his personal collection. Artworks by prominent Black American artists, including Kehinde Wiley, Deborah Roberts, and Michael Ray Charles, are displayed alongside instruments once owned by legendary musicians, as well as historical photographs, sports and movie memorabilia, and more. Together they reveal the connections among the people, places, and ideas that have fueled Lee’s incisive storytelling. ¶
Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
The Crooklyn Way
When I began thinking of the essence of Spike’s life (Black history and culture, Brooklyn, sports, music, cinema history, and family), I realized that there’s only one thing that ties all of these things together—Crooklyn. ¶ Crooklyn is a 1994 American semi-autobiographical film produced and directed by Spike Lee, who wrote it with his siblings Joie and Cinqué. Taking place in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, during the summer of 1973,[2] the film primarily centers on a young girl named Troy Carmichael (played by Zelda Harris) and her family. Troy learns life lessons through her rowdy brothers Clinton, Wendell, Nate, and Joseph; her loving but strict mother Carolyn (Alfre Woodard), and her naive, struggling father Woody (Delroy Lindo). ¶ It’s from this iconic film that I designed this capsule collection. ¶
Image courtesy of Spike Lee
I designed this capsule collection based on this iconic film. By reimagining ephemera from the film, I transformed the Brooklyn Museum into the Crooklyn Museum. ¶ To make this happen, I worked with my colleague at Vocal Type to revive the iconic Crooklyn logo, originally designed by the legendary Art Sims. From my understanding, it had never been vectorized before. So, we made a few updates while we had the opportunity. ¶ Feel free to skip this part if you’re not interested in all of the details. However, while they may look similar, the changes were pretty drastic. The most drastic changes involved fixing the weight inconsistencies and reworking the spacing between the letters. You can see this most directly in the ‘k,’ ‘l,’ ‘y,’ and ‘n.’ We made the dot terminal on the ‘C’ a bit larger to fill in the negative space a bit more. And lastly, we moved the swash so that it didn’t cut off the loop of the ‘y.’ ¶
The original design by Art Sims, placed beneath the updated design in a red outline.
When I first pitched this idea to Spike, a huge smile came over his face. From that point on, Spike wanted the collection to feel like a takeover of the Brooklyn Museum. So, based on the wordmark that appeared on the movie posters, I made the Crooklyn wordmark 3D and plastered it over the existing Brooklyn Museum logo. ¶
These wordmarks were not only applied to pieces within the capsule collection but a store was also opened within the exhibition space known as the Crooklyn Bodega. ¶
Once that was finished, I came across some of the original merch from the film. Spike has been selling apparel and accessories since the early ‘90s as a part of the promotion for his films. As it turns out, the eyes from the Crooklyn wordmark transformed into a mascot of sorts. So I updated the mascot as well, removed the afro (there was an afro on the original), and turned the face into the official seal of the Crooklyn Museum. ¶
All of assets combined to form the first half of the Crooklyn Museum capsule collection. ¶
Side note: These were Spike’s absolute favorite pieces from the collection. He purchased 5 of these hoodies and I’m not sure how many beanies. Aside from wearing the hoodie on the Today Show, he also wore it, and the beanie, in a photoshoot for MSCHF.
After completing this half of the collection, I designed another iteration of the circular badge, but this time with the logo of Spike’s production company, 40 Acres and a Mule. You can see this in the beanie above as well.
The last piece in this collection was a collage of the Crooklyn logo. Originally designed as a poster, this became the perfect design for a notebook cover.
At the Opening
This collection's great realization was at the exhibition's VIP opening. When my family and I first walked in (because Spike met them a few years ago when the SPIKE book came out) and saw all of the museum employees wearing one of the pieces from the collection. I had the opportunity to speak with many of them, and they could not stop talking about how much they loved the collection. The store employees even used the Crooklyn Museum badge as their profile picture for the museum slack channel. It was amazing.
The Results
This capsule collection sold out multiple times, resulting in over $100,000 in sales.
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Partner(s)
Art Director: Amber Luan
Project Manager: Ashley Lampkin
Photography: David Yonghwan Lee -
Timeline
Start: 08.2023
End: 10.2023
Launch: 11.2023 -
Service(s)
Fashion
Identity
Typography -
Note(s)
N/A