In April 2025, The New Yorker celebrated a milestone few publications reach: its centennial. To mark the occasion, the venerable magazine turned to animation—yes, animation—as the medium of choice to honor its storied visual history. The result? A stunning short film created by ROOF Studio in partnership with Le Truc (Publicis), Condé Nast Creative Marketing, and the music house Human.
Titled “Everything, Covered: 100 Years of The New Yorker,” the 60-second animated tribute weaves together thousands of cover artworks into a poetic, emotionally resonant visual journey. For advertising professionals, the campaign offers not only a celebration of a media icon but also a blueprint in how to modernize brand heritage for today’s attention economy.
A Script That Frames the Century
At the heart of the spot lies a deceptively simple narrative device: the repeated phrase “One Hundred Years of…” This refrain introduces each visual theme in the film—curiosity, humor, contradiction, resilience—reframing archival covers in a context that feels lyrical and modern.
Rather than follow a chronological structure, the script takes a thematic path. It’s not a history lesson. It’s a meditation—on culture, design, thought, and the human experience.
This creative approach has multiple benefits:
- It avoids the trap of a linear recap, instead offering emotional pacing.
- It enables modular storytelling, easily adapted to various ad lengths (:60, :30, :15).
- It resonates across demographics, uniting nostalgia with current relevance.
The script itself was developed collaboratively between The New Yorker’s editorial team and the creatives at Le Truc. It’s both editorial and advertising, poetry and branding—a tone that perfectly reflects the hybrid space The New Yorker has long occupied.
Turning Archives Into Art
Imagine having 5,000 covers to choose from—and trying to condense them into a single minute of motion. That’s the challenge ROOF Studio embraced. But they didn’t just scroll and select. They tagged. They categorized. They studied.
Each cover was indexed with metadata: tone, theme, era, mood, even color palette. This granular system allowed the team to curate sequences based on emotional continuity rather than visual style alone. For example, a line like “One Hundred Years of Finding Clarity in Chaos” might be paired with a post-9/11 cover or a surreal pandemic-era illustration—whatever best echoed the script’s sentiment.
This approach allowed ROOF to move away from traditional storyboarding. Instead, they used mood as the compass. That’s an innovative lesson for agencies working with deep archives: storytelling doesn’t have to be plot-based—it can be tone-driven.
Audio That Moves the Soul
Visuals were just one side of this immersive experience. For music, ROOF and Human selected a reimagined version of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—a nod to both the city that shaped The New Yorker and the magazine’s own signature sophistication.
The whimsical arrangement added energy and familiarity, threading through the animation like a second narrator. Paired with VO narration, the score amplifies the emotional rhythm: playful here, introspective there, always in sync with the visual tone.
The use of Rhapsody in Blue also anchors the campaign culturally. The piece is as New York as jazz clubs and brownstones, imbuing the spot with city grit and grandeur in equal measure.
Designed for Today’s Media Ecosystem
While the 60-second master version is cinematic, the campaign was never intended as a single-use film. From the outset, it was built to scale. The team developed multiple cutdowns—:30s, :15s, and social-native edits—each maintaining the emotional essence of the full-length piece.
That strategy paid off across platforms. Instagram versions leaned into animated nostalgia. Twitter and LinkedIn focused on media legacy. On TikTok, the shorter versions became visual curiosities—bite-sized bursts of moving culture that drew likes, shares, and commentary from younger audiences.
The modularity also served internal branding goals. Condé Nast used the campaign to anchor cross-channel messaging—reasserting The New Yorker’s relevance without needing to shout. In a media moment overrun by volume, this campaign went deep, not wide—and still achieved virality.
What Brands Can Learn from This Campaign
For niche advertisers or heritage-rich brands, this campaign is more than just a beautiful piece of work—it’s a tactical lesson in cross-functional creativity. Here are some key takeaways:
1. Heritage ≠ Stagnation
Using archives doesn’t mean looking backward. If you frame your history with the right story architecture, it can become radically modern.
2. Metadata is a Creative Tool
Tag your assets well. A rich, well-labeled archive lets you design campaigns by tone, emotion, or theme—not just date.
3. Script Structure Matters
The “One Hundred Years of…” framing offers a masterclass in flexible yet emotionally potent scripting. It creates unity across content types and durations.
4. Design for Platform Variability
Don’t retrofit content. Design your hero asset and variants simultaneously so each platform gets a native experience.
5. Sound is Brand
Music isn’t just background—it’s identity. Use it to reflect your brand’s soul, especially if you’re communicating across generations or emotions.
A Case Study in Emotional Intelligence
Ultimately, this campaign succeeds because it feels human. Every decision—from VO tone to color sequencing to musical pacing—was made to create an emotional ripple. It’s storytelling with restraint and clarity. No voiceovers telling you what to feel. No fast cuts just for attention. Just resonance, rhythm, and reverence for the source material.
It’s no surprise that the campaign was quickly named “Ad of the Day” by The Drum. But awards aside, it stands out for something more profound: it shows what’s possible when brand storytelling is guided by cultural intelligence and emotional fidelity.
Telling Old Stories in New Ways
ROOF Studio’s animated homage to The New Yorker isn’t just an anniversary campaign—it’s a roadmap for how advertisers can unlock the magic in their archives. When you frame your legacy with intentional scripting, emotional storytelling, and platform-aware design, you don’t just preserve the past. You animate it.
For brands wondering how to stay relevant without chasing trends, this project answers with confidence: your story isn’t old. It just hasn’t been told like this before.