Brought on board to take the creative helm of one of the oldest and largest dance competitions, one of my first major projects was to completely re-design that year's program for the Finals. The challenge involved not just providing an updated visual aesthetic, but also a time constraint of a little over 7 days before the project would need to be finalized for print. The programs themselves were items that the dance participants and their families highly valued and collected, and as an item that between 10,000 - 20,000 customers purchased per event, it was important to deliver something of a higher quality then had been produced up to that point.
Rather than look at the time constraint as an excuse to produce something that would be "safe" and potentially underwhelming, my goal was to use the program as a jumping off point to signal the coming company wide re-design that was too come, and to introduce some of the concepts that would entail. The idea was to present a visual cohesion across all print and digital media with an emphasis on refreshing the brand while honoring its 30 year history that a series of young up and coming dancers had come to associate it with.
Up until this point the program had always been produced in a vertical aspect ratio that had been problematic in creating unique layouts. By switching to a 16:9 ratio not only were the photos in the program given more room to showcase the drama and physicality of the dance moves they captured, but it also allowed for more room for the placement of copy and creativity in page layout. As a bonus the new layout made the Finals program standout as all the previous programs had not had not been produced in this format. A bright palette of colors was implemented to appeal to the energy of a younger, family focused audience, but it also was used it to make previously bland and visually dense sections like the competition's schedule, more easy to grasp by color coding information. The cover was designed with an eye towards conveying the drama and importance of the Finals themselves, with a custom graphic marquee combined with a retouched stock image. A clean design sense which leaned on geometric shapes helped to tie the program together.
The results were beyond expectations as customers responded to the re-design by making it the highest selling program ever produced by the company.