From 2011-2012, I served as Communications Director for The Contemporary Theater Company, a 501(c)(3) arts non-profit serving the communities of southern Rhode Island. Among my responsibilities was the cultivation and management of the company’s brand across all its messaging.
Immediately, I implemented a banner system for use in publicity for all the company’s offerings. I adapted the company’s original logo (above, left), a rather ornate glyph adapted from the theater’s initials, to make it more playful and welcoming. In keeping with this, I began to employ only lowercase text for the company’s primary font (American Typewriter Bold). I balanced this with a more refined secondary font, Gill Sans, which was used for body text. The gold of the original logo became a brand color used primarily in background fills, with maroon and aqua serving as complements.
In order to suggest the company’s vitality to potential patrons and to the community at large, I adapted a quote from a reviewer as the company’s slogan–“Here to play.” The slogan (with a revamped logo) emblazoned merchandise such as company hoodies, which remain to date a very popular item.
After deploying a successful capital campaign, the company moved into a space on Wakefield’s main street in the summer of 2012. I incorporated a silhouette of the building’s pitched roof into materials around that time, to build a strong association between the company and its home.
Near the conclusion of my term as Communications Director, I drafted a proposal for a more radical brand update which would entirely discontinue use of the glyph–which, being essentially typographical, I viewed as emotionally inert–in favor of an image system based on an unfinished cube, which could suggest both an invitation to create (a building block) and an open space (the theater).
Although this suggestion was ultimately not implemented, most of the contributions I made to the Contemporary Theater Company’s brand–imagistically, vocally, and conceptually–are still on display in their messaging today.