Paula Scher's confrontational Shakespeare in the park identity

Paula Scher and her team at Pentagram have created the campaign for a Shakespeare performance programme in Central Park, using bright colours and a provocative typographic style we wouldn’t perhaps usually associate with the Bard. The performances marry Shakespeare’s The Tempest with fairy-tale romance Cymbeline – two pieces about magic, storytelling and strange forces.

The project saw Paula dismantle the existing identity for the Public Theater, which facilitates the park performances, and acts as a preview for the look of the graphics for the organisation’s 2015-16 season. The imagery is based around the word “free,” and uses slices of type that slash through one another and through existing photographs.

“The tempest of type creates a mini-identity that both dramatically updates and functions within the familiar Public Theater brand,” says Pentagram. “With countless expressions in print and digital media, as well as environmental installations like snipped posters on the street, the identity is ‘always on’ and meets audiences wherever they are. An institutional identity must look as good in an ad in a Google search as it does in signage on a front of a building.”

Paula worked with Pentagram designer Jeff Close and the Public’s art director Kirstin Huber and her team on the project.