For our 14th (!) collaboration with Northern Light Theatre on materials for their 42nd season, the client came to us with a great idea: expanding on the season’s theme of “The Virgin, The Whore, and Something In Between”, they suggested that we incorporate an illustrated style into this theme which touches on religion in direct and indirect ways by playing on the style of Russian Orthodox iconography. The approach is somewhat controversial, but so are the pieces that NLT routinely elects to produce.
We ran with it, and produced characters which embrace this look, and who, with the exception of Mary, have a few contemporary embellishments: a hockey stick, a sandwich, handcuffs, an afro… The patterns used also build on the themes of each production: tears and goblets (a play on “water into wine”) behind Mary in The Testament of Mary, confessional screen crosses behind Genevieve in Do This in Memory of Me, and hearts (love) and upside-down hearts (lust) behind Beatrice in SLUT. Typographically, we kept things simple, but various condensed cuts of DIN add a nice complement to the brightness of the illustrations.
Client
Northern Light Theatre
Designer
Graham Johnson
Scope
- Advertising campaigns
- Print/marketing materials
This post was last updated on October 5, 2020 by Rachel Beyer