First opened in 1902, Irvington Theater has become one of the cultural hearts of the Hudson Rivertowns, New York. In 2019, the Theater Commission built new ambitions for their programming. The aim became to showcase the diverse range and wealth of events produced by the Theater and their Arts Partners, and revitalize and centralize their brand identity in a way that could be executed by their newly assemble internal team.
Prior to joining Pentagram as partner, Andrea Trabucco-Campos helped develop a brand identity designed to capture the cultural energy flowing through the Theater. Inspired by the visual language of old-school advertisement and wheatpaste posters, the new system is based on two main elements—layering and vernacular typography.
Layering is a metaphor of the passage of time, achieved both through stacking and color. The wood-inspired typography captures the vibrance of the varied cultural personalities passing through the Irvington Theater. Andrea also simplified the name from Irvington Town Hall Theater to Irvington Theater, a more direct and memorable moniker.
The logo is typeset in Irvington Modern Gothic, a custom-drawn typeface developed by Andrea for the theatre. The typeface 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). It’s neutral yet solid feel was a perfect complement to the expression of the display wood-inspired typefaces by The Pyte Foundry, which are a nod to the rich history of wheatpaste posters that littered the walls of cities in the Nineteenth century.
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 at small town color printers that used affordable color papers with whom Irvington Theater used to print before they went out of business.
