Arts Branding – Audition Project

Arts Branding – Audition Project

Arts branding for Audition Project, an art project by Miss High Leg Kick.

Audition Project is an ongoing work which brings together 75 UK-based artists onto the Birmingham Hippodrome stage in a snapshot of the performing arts in 2016.

They will be re-creating the opening audition scene from the 1985 film ‘A Chorus Line’. Over the course of a single day they will learn the audition dance on the main stage of the Birmingham Hippodrome. The process will be filmed shot by shot by Richard DeDomenici to match the original film scene. It is a dance choreographed for a large group however the artists will feature as individuals in their own right.

Audition Project explores themes of ambition, creativity and dance, and the challenges faced by artists in a difficult funding environment.

Toop Studio’s response to the Arts branding brief

Our starting point to this branding project was the film poster A chorus Line, The Movie, specifically the typography set at 45 degrees and the narrow font with the circle for the ‘O’.

Having read the synopsis, we were particularly interested in the following:

The work will explore themes of ambition, creativity and dance, and the challenges we face in a difficult funding environment.

Our identity therefore tries to embody some of this, by using a starburst as a basic repeatable element that represents ambition/creativity/dance (and ‘showbiz glitz’), which when used in repeat, could also represent the individual performers. These starburst elements can then used in several ways:

• as a ring of stars to make the O within the logo
• as a stand-alone ring of stars
• as a repeated ‘3D’ pattern (a tunnel of stars)
• as a repeated pattern in 2D, like a textile pattern

A repeated pattern is also a practical way to apply a recognisable visual element in all sorts of situations (with photography, or against abstract backgrounds).

Our arts branding proposal for Audition Project is for a logo that is always monochrome, (and optionally in a circle), and a set of supporting patterns that can all be used in different situations, either in monochrome or in colour, set in a specific colour palette derived from the colours found in the outfits worn by the original dancers in A Chorus Line, and the subsequent Audition Project dancers.