The Donmar Warehouse is a world-renowned, intimate, 251-seat, not-for-profit theatre in London’s Covent Garden known for producing bold, high-quality theatre, including new plays, classics, and musicals, often transferring successful shows to the West End and Broadway. It’s famous for its intimate audience experience (audiences sit no more than four rows away from the stage) and has been led by notable Artistic Directors including Sam Mendes and Michael Grandage, attracting top talent while nurturing emerging artists.
The theatre’s brand identity had not been significantly appraised or upgraded since its launch in 1992, giving us a golden opportunity to build a coherent, contemporary design system underpinned with a new brand strategy that would instil confidence, warmth and openness that was felt to be lacking in comparison to some of the West End competition. A brand that would better reflect the amazing variety and quality of its productions in a truly unique space.
Working directly with the Donmar’s Artistic Director, Executive Director and Director of Audiences, we developed a new and compelling brand narrative centred on the idea of ‘Powerfully Intimate Theatre’ – something the Donmar can claim with absolute authority.
This idea became the brief for the visual identity. Power and intimacy are great tensions to play with graphically, using changing scale, depth, movement and sound to convey the range of emotion on stage.
The theatre has a devoted following of discerning audience members. This upgrade to their identity and customer experience is all a push to help the Donmar feel more open and accessible to new, younger theatre goers. Our work had to be accepted by all audiences and not risk alienating their loyal base.
Nothing was off the table when it came to change, but it was clear that the only distinctive visual brand asset the theatre had since inception was its logo – DONMAR in neutral, bold caps, reversed out of a red tab on its side. Naturally, we looked at various ways we could improve on this, but thanks to its strength, every time we changed it we lost its essential “Donmar-ness” – So we made it the lynchpin of the entire design system and brand world.
The iconic logo ‘tab’ now becomes a dynamic canvas, extending to frame content, increasing the real estate of Donmar red across communications and creating a more flexible, yet consistently bold design system.
To push the ‘Powerfully Intimate’ idea even further, we worked with 3D and motion studio Rokabye to develop a set of tonal animated textures, again using the logo tab as a starting point and subtly building it into the subject matter of the animations.
Each animated texture was born from our strategy, and graphically represents an intimately powerful emotion felt within the Donmar space. Such as Anticipation – the build of a storyline. Or Empathy – deeply relating to a character’s struggle or triumph. The theatre uses digital displays throughout their foyer and these provide a really powerful backdrop in print or on screen to layer programme information over.
We employed the use of the font Fusiona Alts (created by Branding With Type), a typeface that delivers bold characteristics with intimate detail, all in a condensed form that functionally helps production titles and actor names to be big, even if they’re long.
When it comes to photography and illustration, the theatre’s needs are many. Each season is marketed well in advance. Full production photography only happens near the actual performance dates so metaphorical imagery sets the tone across a season, each production communication is set within our Donmar Canvas, creating consistency – while allowing for expression through every individual production. The Donmar’s programmes are considered ‘collectibles’ and we are working with the Donmar to define the brief for the illustrators and artists of future seasons.
The visual identity was launched via a bold new website, bringing Donmar Red to the forefront. Beyond the visuals, the new strategy establishes clear tone-of-voice principles, steering the voice of the brand, both internally and externally.
Refreshing a brand identity after more than 30 years is a big responsibility, and I am so pleased that we entrusted that challenge to the SomeOne team. Throughout the project they have been brilliantly collaborative – guiding us carefully through the process and ensuring the end result is considered, easy to use and thoughtfully underpinned with a clear strategy. Our brand identity now matches the quality of the experience of being in the Donmar, and gives us a flexible and beautiful design system to work with.
The Donmar brings added drama to every performance through their more intimately designed spaces and productions. It became our mission to develop a system that got out of the way of the magic to attract new audiences attention.
David Law — Founder & Executive Strategy Director
Fi Casey — Creative Director
Julia Clark — Senior Designer
Ellie Knight — Account Director
Rokabye — 3D and Motion Agency
All photography is owned by Donmar Warehouse and partner photographers