Capturing the cultural energy flowing through the historic Theater

First opened in 1902, Irvington Theater has become one of cultural hearts of the Hudson Rivertowns, in New York. In 2019 the Theater Commission built new ambitions for their programming. The aim became to showcase the diverse range & wealth of events produced by the Theater and their Arts Partners, revitalize and centralize their brand identity in a way that could be produced by their newly assemble internal team.

The brand identity is designed to capture the cultural energy flowing through the Theater: inspired by the visual language of old-school advertisement and wheatpaste posters, we created a system based on two main elements—layering and vernacular typography. Layering is a metaphor of the passage of time, achieved both through stacking & color. The wood-inspired typography captures the vibrance of the varied cultural personalities passing through the Irvington Theater.

Finally, we simplified the naming from Irvington Town Hall Theater to Irvington Theater, which is more direct & memorable.

The logo is typeset in a custom-drawn typeface developed for Irvington Theater by Andrea Trabucco-Campos.

Irvington Modern Gothic is a revival of Modern Gothic, which originated with Barnhart Brothers & Spindler around 1897. It appears to be a modernization of older nineteenth-century gothics, although it has considerable resemblance to the much later European design, Helvetica Bold (1957).

Its neutral yet solid feel was a perfect complement to the expression of the display wood-inspired typefaces by The Pyte Foundry.

The color palette captures the rich diversity of programming, infusing energy and boldness to the identity.

The always black type on color background is a nod to small town color printers that used affordable color papers with whom Irvington Theater used to print before they went out of business.