We were approached by Ballet Cymru to help them revitalise their branding, promotional design work and website. They were looking for a local agency who would work with them for the long term to support their ongoing design needs and offer helpful support and advice. They chose us. Yay!
The new identity
We started by refining their logo. Their brand was already well established but they felt the time was right to improve on their identity, freshen it up and inject a new lease of life into it. We had to retain some elements so it was more a case of evolution rather than revolution. The old identity used a rough, distressed typeface which jarred with the precision and beauty of the performance, and also the imagery we had available.
We decided to create a new identity system, comprising of a simple word-mark set in FS Albert, placed in red rectangle. This helped us create a single mark that would be immediately identifiable as Ballet Cymru, even if it was applied to different branding for each performance.
Show branding
The next step was to produce branding and promotional materials for their upcoming shows, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. This included flyers, posters, pop up banners, email templates and some rather swanky programmes for patrons to buy at the shows.
Luckily for us, Ballet Cymru had already invested in photography and supplied us with beautiful images to work with. That is often half the battle when it comes to print items like these.
The programmes were the biggest of the jobs and traditionally Ballet Cymru had A4 glossy ones produced. We decided to make the programmes smaller and uncoated. In fact, all printed materials use an uncoated stock and the final versions certainly resulted in some ooh's and ahh's when they were delivered. Being a proudly Welsh organisation, all communications and publications are bilingual.
Most recently we redesigned the Ballet Cymru website, completing a long process of making all their communications consistent. The new site showcases some of the wonderful photography and video—the perfect way to highlight their shows.
It's been great to work on so many projects with the Ballet Cymru team, and we're looking forward to continuing a long creative partnership!
