New York feels like one long pour of energy. Constant. Caffeinated. Alive. It’s a city that moves at its own tempo, and during marathon weekend, that becomes visible. Every street corner feels designed. Every sound feels intentional. The whole city turns into a visual system in motion.
For us at Open All Hours, New York has always felt like a kind of home. It influences how we think, how we write, how we see. Marathon weekend captures that same pulse we chase in our work, the mix of pace, design, and detail that makes the city impossible to switch off from.
From Brooklyn to the Bronx, the TCS New York City Marathon transforms the city into a living brand world. Forty-two kilometres of typography, signage, sound, and structure working together in harmony. It is as much a design performance as it is an athletic one.
The typography sets the tone. Clean. Human. Confident. It sits across bridges and barricades, clear enough to read from a distance but never sterile. Colour plays the same role. The palette this year feels perfectly tuned to the city’s light. It’s recognisably New York, and intentionally so.
What stands out most, though, is how seamlessly identity lives across environments. The logos expand into motion graphics. The grid becomes the course. The whole event feels like a design system stretched across a living city.
For designers watching or running, this is a masterclass in how identity can move without losing itself. It’s also a reminder that creativity and endurance often share the same discipline. Both require patience, and moments of pause between bursts of effort.
On marathon weekend, New York feels like the perfect metaphor for how we work at Open All Hours. Always on. Always creating. Always chasing clarity. We think better with caffeine in our system and chaos in our surroundings, the same way the city finds its focus in the middle of noise.
As the sun drops over Central Park and the signage begins to fade back into the skyline, the city returns to its usual pace. But the system remains. The colours. The typography. The feeling. A perfectly poured espresso that lingers long after the cup is empty.
That is what graphic designers saw at the New York Marathon.
Shot of the good stuff
