BRAND IDENTITY: 42nd Street Moon
A New Moon
42nd Street Moon was a mid-size Bay Area theater company with a challenge: how to create a brand that reflected a new vision and a new relevancy. And also, how to deal with that name…
THE PROBLEM
Moon began life as a small company dedicated to presenting concert versions of “forgotten musicals”—musicals from the Golden Age of Broadway that, despite being written by some of the titans of the American Songbook Unfortunately, as their production values and audiences dwindled, it was usually all too clear why they’d been forgotten in the first place.
In 2016, new Artistic Directors took the company over from its founders, and set about to change its mission: Moon would shift its focus and repertoire to musicals that were either new, relevant, or made newly relevant.
I was brought aboard to take over the branding portion of the process.
The idea was to start with a logo that felt structural, with great architecture and clean lines, that hinted at the Art Deco of the company’s (and Broadway’s) past, but didn’t trap the company in it.
One major problem: That name! “42nd Street Moon” is a quaint old piece of Broadway slang that was used to refer to the lights of 42nd Street. It’s a name that’s neither versatile, relevant, mellifluous, nor universal… but the name was staying…
The Solution
We found our answer in this logo: a purely typographic treatment using the distinctly geometric shapes of House Industries’ Neutraface type family as a jumping-off point. The 4 and the 2 were redrawn to connect seamlessly and to give the piece a positive, upward eyeflow. The primary logo has only one color: black. The reverse versions can use either white or a pale yellow, on top of either black or deep blue — suggestive of a night sky, which is the only reference to the actual moon in the logo. Like the lights of Midtown Manhattan, the glow here isn’t about celestial bodies, but about theatrical signage.
Keeping the logo geometric also meant that it could adapt in many different ways for any situation at hand. Need it to be 3D to evoke Hollywood studio logos? No problem. Need it to look like a lit marquee? No problem. Rainbow-filled for Pride? You’ve got it.
The structure of the logo is strong enough to keep its integrity no matter what you fill it with or how you treat it.
Variability
The basic architecture of the logo created a visual language that we could use for subsidiary brands as well: Moon School, the education arm of the theater, a 25th Anniversary brandmark, and initiatives like Back to Back (a presentation of musicals with the plays they’re based on), The Sondheim Sweep (a commitment to producing all the musicals of Stephen Sondheim), and Moon Beams (their streamed content during the Covid pandemic).
DC Scarpelli is an artist. He understands what the client wants to say with each piece and they he makes it happen. His use of color, line, contrast, and type is endlessly inventive, and his experience, kindness, and generosity make him one of my favorite collaborators.
— Daren A.C. Carollo, Artistic Director, 42nd Street Moon
TAKEAWAY: IT SHONE
My design time with 42nd Street Moon turned out to be one of the most fruitful collaborations of my life. In addition to the total rebrand, I produced all their season key art for six years.
And it showed! Moon has gone from a theatrical anomaly to being one of San Francisco’s top destinations for musical theater, both classic and contemporary. Implementing brand guidelines across an a prominent public institution—giving it its face and shaping it for years in collaboration with its leadership’s strong vision—was immensely fulfilling.