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PNC Broadway
Across
America-Pittsburgh 09/10 Season
The 2009/2010 season artwork was not easy to come by. Pittsburgh's
08/09 season contained two blockbusters — WICKED and
JERSEY BOYS. Both shows have branding strong enough to carry season
artwork. For this season, the Rockettes, while well-known, didn't come
with the same instantly recognizable art.
We went through a series of different options. This was the first solid
design:
There were a number of elements the marketer liked. The cover was very
bright and represented the entire season strongly. It looked like a
season piece, as opposed to a brochure promoting a single show.
I knew we weren't there, though. The brochure lacked any sense of
continuity.
Searching for inspiration, I came across this photo on the Radio City
Christmas Spectacular website:
I had found my cover. It would need work,but this was the kind of photo
that could go places. Once I showed the photo to the marketer and
explained my idea, we were off.
The next brochure cover looked very different from the first:
This was a very rough mock, but I knew it was the right direction to be
headed in. There were inherent problems with using the exact photo. The
marquee posters were in too much of a forced perspective. The sizes
were all off. The Rockettes looked awkward and not as polished as I
wanted them to appear. But the idea was right on.
A few days later, we were looking at this cover:
Some of the problems had been corrected. I redrew the marquees and
worked on the perspective to keep the Times Square look without forcing
so much perspective that you lost the show titles. I controlled the
poster's proportions to keep them all relatively equal. I found an
image of the Rockettes that looked much more polished and allowed the
logo to shine out.
After a few more meetings, we arrived at what would be our final
brochure cover:
The proportions were even more controlled. It was decided that each
marquee should be similar, and the wrap-around for DREAMGIRLS and the
horizontal for XANADU were replaced with upright poster displays. More
lights were added in the background and the logo header at the top was
given even more prominence.
This design led to an entire campaign. Posters were created with dates
and venues added to each of the show posters in the artwork. A print
campaign was built around the art. We also produced this television
spot that aired during the Tonys:
<<insert tv commercial>>
This season artwork was not easy to come by, but turned into exactly
what we wanted it to be. It represented each show, allowed the
diversity of the artwork to shine out against a dark background and
treated the return of the Rockettes as a blockbuster without calling
overwhelming attention to the show.
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