The breadth of the brand identity for National Black Theatre goes far beyond signage, and encompasses graphic design, architecture and most importantly, social justice. “We were drawn to the theatre’s monumental legacy of liberatory art practice and we loved its commitment to visibly celebrating a connection to their ancestral past while also manifesting the theatre of the future,” Andy tells us. The foundation for the original identity comes from designer and educator Lori Evelyn’s brand identity work and her wordmark based on the theatre’s original hand-painted sign. It features supporting typefaces and colour palette, as well as a vectorised drawing of the theatre’s historical logo – also known as Max for “maximum spirit”.
The projects first step included creating a greater consistency in the letterform design and spacing to align it more with the historical signage. “In our opinion, Max had lost a bit of its original character in the process of vector simplification,” Andy shares. In the new drawing, the team restore its chiselled face and bring the detail back into the hair, which draws on not only its original logo but it takes inspiration from the works of silhouette artist Kara Walker and graphic designer Emory Douglas. The identity also adds to Evelyn’s colourway which includes red (pulse) and yellow (soul) colourway, adding an electric blue throughout the rebrand.
The theatres pre-existing typeface – Martin by Vocal Type founder Tré Seals – was originally applied in uppercase, but the team wanted something more bespoke in order to “express its unique and visual voice”. Now, the theatre has its very own typeface NBT Visionary, which uses the foundation of Evelyn’s wordmark. Led by type designer Corinne Ang, who was on the Isometric team at the time, the team produced a full uppercase character set, consisting of numerals and contextual alternates, with consistent counter sizes, a balanced weight and scalability.
