Shakespeare Theatre Company is proud to present its new visual identity. Crafted by Marina Willer of renowned design firm Pentagram, this bold new look combines the past, present, and future identities of STC. For a company spread across multiple locations in DC, this fresh redesign aims to visually unify STC, no matter which space you are visiting.
In our new logo we’re using two fonts,” explains STC Artistic Director Simon Godwin in this video — “one a little bit more classic, one a little bit more funky.”
Theater is an act of collective storytelling combined with a shared witnessing intended to create a force for good in the world. Presenting texts from times other than our own, STC sheds a unique light on contemporary questions in imaginative new ways. STC seeks classic texts—known or unknown, new or old—to speak as widely as possible to its community. The best theater is haunting; it lives on in the artists and audiences that witness it, changing the way they experience the world.
The new logo speaks to that haunting characteristic of theater; it is an interplay of a modern serif and a classic sans-serif typeface aimed at recognizing and honoring the past while illuminating the future. “Just as the goal of theater is to evoke feeling, our goal is for patrons to see this logo and experience a glimpse of the feelings they may encounter when attending an STC performance,” says Willer. “And rather than confining STC to a single brand color, we have crafted a color palette of several vibrant and inviting hues to better represent the theater’s contemporary voice and their adaptability across genres.”
“At STC we tell vital stories in audacious ways and this vibrant new look expresses just that,” says Godwin. “When Michael Kahn founded the theater, we were Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger. Then we were The Shakespeare Theatre and then on to Shakespeare Theatre Company. There’s a history of evolution in this company and this is a continuation of that momentum. We’re bridging our beloved past, our resonant present, and our bright future.”
STC’s next production is The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, written and directed by Mary Zimmerman. Click the image above for information and tickets.
