A Decade of Decadence: Back to the 1980s Event Identity
Project: A Decade of Decadence: Back to the 1980s Event Branding
Client: The Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts
Role: Strategic Advisor, Art Director, and Designer to internal teams
This arts fundraising invitation dropped out of a flying Delorean time machine. Taking cues from the performing arts center’s current season of Broadway shows—The Wiz, MJ the Musical, and Back to the Future—the invitation and the full event identity celebrates all things 1980s. The copy and visuals harvest cultural moments such as Susan Kare’s early interface icons for Apple, the era’s neon colored fashions, and campy popular television shows like Dynasty.
Although the average 1980s middle-schooler could whip up a fortune teller within minutes, this invitation fortune teller was painstakingly crafted through a close collaboration with a talented printer. Producing the invitation required a high attention to detail and many hours of handwork. The result is a piece that elicited delight in recipients as they recalled light-hearted moments of their own childhood—all the better to prompt them to support much needed arts-in-education programs for the performing arts center.