Finger Lakes Opera
I. the challenge
The Finger Lakes Opera was looking to re-do their website to be more modern and appeal to larger and younger audiences as well as expand into the surrounding community. They felt that they were not portraying themselves well enough due to the constraints of having to remain within the SUNY Geneseo guidelines and having to be on the Drupal platform.
At the same time, the FLO’s production, The Elixir of Love, was gearing up to be performed and branding, advertising and design work needed to be completed.
Services
Platform
II. Website
The website was to be designed and developed for the existing Drupal7 install that the rest of the the University was running. Even though I could design whatever I wanted to, I had to design it using the already implemented global CSS style sheet as a base.
The goal of the website was to be heavily photography focused with large images that could be regularly updated, but otherwise a clean and simple layout to convey needed information. The colors of the site would be changing each year and were to be based upon that year’s production.
The site’s Drupal7 template was to be built by the head developer on staff, however, I was to build out the initial responsive HTML, CSS, and any animated functionality to make his template creation faster.
III. Elixir of Love Branding
The Elixir of Love production was set by the director to to take place during the 1920s, so the overall look was to be in the Art Deco style. Brandon Grotesque was chosen due to it being geometric in design and followed the same classifications of typefaces created in the 1920s. The logo was meant to have strong lines and bold curves to be representative of design during that time period.
The companion graphic for the production was designed to be an optical illusion speaking to the main two characters of the opera as well as the main focal point of the bottle. The silhouette of the bottle was then cast in glass for use as the “Elixir” prop for the performance.
IV. Marketing
Part of the Lively Community Foundation, the Emotional Wellness Brigade supports the Foundation’s goal of providing education and training that promotes well-being through offering grants to individuals to be trained in Rapid Transformational Therapy™ (RTT).
I was requested to create a logo for this part of the foundation that was simple and classy while continuing to use the overall Lively brand’s color palette and overall aesthetic. Though her main brand utilizes hand lettering, she wanted the EWB to appeal to both men and women and be less feminine. We decided to use negative space and simple typography to create a look that still talked to her existing audience but also opened her up to appeal to a wider range of individuals.