Musical Theatre Awards

The annual print system for Greater Austin's high school musical theatre awards

The participant poster: a red-and-yellow duotone halftone of high-school cast members with arms in the air, with AND THE AWARD GOES TO set in chunky overprinted yellow caps across three lines. A footer block lists every participating school and production for the season. The Awards lockup floats top-center with ESTD 2014.

The Greater Austin High School Musical Theatre Awards is the Long Center's annual recognition program for the high school musical theatre season. Each spring it picks up roughly forty schools across Central Texas, runs an adjudication tour through every production, and ends with a single ceremony at the Long Center where the season's nominees and winners get celebrated on stage.

I designed the print system that runs the program. Sign, posters, certificates, banners, lobby flyers, program ads, t-shirts, the envelope card the host opens on stage to read the name. Same brand year after year, with the season's photography rotated in and the participating-school list reset.

The headline piece

One sign, one idea, one room.

The 22×34 lobby sign is the brand at full strength. The Awards mark — a fanned beam of white stripes that reads as a curtain reveal and a stage spotlight at the same time — sits centered against a violet-to-magenta watercolor wash. The full lockup grounds it. ESTD 2014 dates it. It's the same sign every year. Audience members walking in already know the year's program.

The 22×34 sign: deep violet ink wash background transitioning to magenta, white Awards mark — a fanned beam of stripes — centered above the GREATER AUSTIN HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL THEATRE AWARDS lockup with ESTD 2014 underneath.

The standing banner

And the award goes to.

The standing banner takes the headline of the participant poster and runs it tall. Same red-and-yellow duotone of cast members onstage, same chunky AND THE AWARD GOES TO overprint, with the Awards lockup and the date slotted in below on a black footer panel. Reused at every step of the year's events: the regional adjudication nights, the nominee announcement, and the lobby of the awards itself.

The nomination banners

One per nominated production.

The nomination banners do the most work for the program emotionally. Every nominated production gets one — twenty-eight of them in 2016 — addressed by name to the school and the show, with the specific categories called out in modular black-and-white cards across the band. Schools display them at home for weeks before the ceremony. That's how the program reaches the parents who never bought a ticket.

Anderson High School nomination banner: violet watercolor ground with CONGRATULATIONS / ANDERSON HIGH SCHOOL set in white-on-black, CINDERELLA on a white panel underneath in violet caps, has received 3 NOMINATIONS, then three black nomination cards across the band — Best Orchestra, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Shea Washburn), Best Costume Design — with the Awards lockup centered below and tickets-on-sale March 28 in pink type.

Brentwood Christian School nomination banner: same violet-to-magenta ground, CONGRATULATIONS BRENTWOOD CHRISTIAN SCHOOL banner across the top, SEUSSICAL THE MUSICAL has received 6 NOMINATIONS, six black nomination cards spanning Best Production, Best Featured Performer (Alex Pittner), Best Actress in a Leading Role (Laura Doyle), Best Direction, Best Musical Direction, Best Scenic Design, with the Awards lockup centered below and the partner logos along the bottom edge.

The certificate

Frame-ready. Name-customized.

Each winner left the ceremony with a certificate set in the same chunky display caps as the sign. Mark at the top, name in display, the production and school where the work was made, the program partners and sponsors at the bottom. The fanned beam mark reappears as a watermark behind the partner row to sign the piece. Print run was custom — every certificate had a name, a category, and a show.

A 2016 Certificate of Award: black border, the Awards lockup at the top, then 2016 CERTIFICATE OF AWARD, 'Be it known that COLIN FALK won the Greater Austin High School Musical Theatre Award for outstanding TECHNICAL DIRECTION for the production of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA at CEDAR PARK HIGH SCHOOL,' the conferred-on date, then a row of partner and sponsor logos with the fanned beam mark watermarked behind them.

The envelope card

The thing the host opens.

The cards inside the envelopes that the host opens on stage. Designed to read at arm's length under stage lights, with enough air around each line that the host doesn't fumble. The fanned beam reappears at the bottom right, faint, as a watermark.

The envelope reveal card: a thick black-bordered horizontal card with THE AWARD GOES TO… set in tracked grey caps, COLIN FALK on a single big line in display sans, 'for THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA at CEDAR PARK HIGH SCHOOL,' and the faint fanned beam watermark in pale grey rising from the bottom-right corner.

The lobby flyer & program ad

Celebrate!

The lobby flyer ran in the program book, the venue lobby, and inside school programs across the spring season. CELEBRATE! set in a hand-script display, a documentary photograph of the cast lit from behind, and the Long Center pillar callout (Celebrate · Collaborate · Captivate) running across the bottom. The black-and-white program ad was the same idea sized down for editorial spreads in school playbills and partner publications.

The black-and-white program ad version: GREATER AUSTIN HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL THEATRE AWARDS set above a CELEBRATE! hand-script over a black panel, a documentary BW photograph of the cheering cast at the bottom, the Awards lockup pulled out to the right with the date and venue, and the Long Center pillar callout (Celebrate · Collaborate · Captivate) on the bottom band.

The t-shirt

Sondheim & Herman & Miranda & me.

The companion t-shirt names the lineage these students are training into and ends with the kid wearing the shirt. SONDHEIM & HERMAN & MIRANDA & RODGERS & GERSHWIN & KANDER & HAMLISCH & ME, with ME set in outlined caps to leave a hole that the kid steps into. The shirt sells outside the venue and at every adjudication night during the season.

A black t-shirt printed with seven composer surnames stacked in white display caps separated by ampersands — SONDHEIM & HERMAN & MIRANDA & RODGERS & GERSHWIN & KANDER & HAMLISCH & — and ending with ME set in outline caps so the wearer becomes the next name in the line.

The work that gets remembered isn't the sign in the lobby. It is the banner that hangs in a high school cafeteria for two weeks. The certificate the kid takes home and frames. The shirt the freshmen show up wearing the next year. Brand systems for community programs travel through the audience long after the curtain comes down.

Closing