TEATRIER

Taking them at their word, we melted down »Theater Trier« into »TEATRIER«. And as the TEATRIER team wandered off to explore the digital potential of analog stage worlds – while keeping the theater itself very much at the center, as their city’s main space for artistic confrontation and participation – we stayed on board to provide advice.

As a wordmark, TEATRIER is fresh yet still relatable. The grid layout that goes along with it makes a bold claim despite its simple format. Nor is the new visual grammar the only important shift: The color scheme is a game-changer too. Various combinations of sensual eggplant and alarming orange add colorful appeal to the theater’s brand-new visual identity. Instead of using stage photography, we decided to limit the visuals to graphic elements designed to affect viewers on a purely associative level.

The new visual identity made its debut in all of the theater’s media starting with the 2015–16 season. An April 2015 press conference gave us the opportunity to start designing some of the media, as well as office supplies and the season brochure. The season program’s new format was particularly brave and agile: a handcrafted pouch containing a stack of cards that could be arranged in any order and used to trigger AR experiences with the help of a custom smartphone app. 50% analog + 30% digital + 30% flexible = 110% TEATRIER – which was also the formula that guided us through our redesign of the Theater Trier website.