Walt Disney Concert Hall
Commie Get It
While the Walt Disney Concert Hall has a most adept in house art department that creates perfectly proficient collateral for the LA Phil and friends, the marketing team decided to think out of the box when promoting an experimental concert, Pravda, that featured a diverse roster of contemporary musicians and djs interpreting the music of Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, and with Dvotchka, Russian folk music from the Stalinist era, demonstrating the profound depth of the musical invention and expression that prevailed in spite of (some might argue because of) the sweeping oppression that has defined the Stalinist regime.
The program featured several well-known figures from the indie/dance/hip-hop scenes like Penut Butter Wolf, Amon Tobin, Cut Chemist, DJ Spooky and Dublab Soundsystem. So the object was to introduce such esoteric programming to an audience attuned more to raves than Ravel. With our experience attracting huge crowds to the largest dance music events in Southern California, we were commissioned to help attract the same crowd to LA’s most consecrated classical venue. Taking cues from Soviet propaganda posters of the 20’s and 30’s, we created original illustrations and State-style graphics to produce a marketing campaign for print. With a bit of irony and contemporary references we avoided the pastiche of a mere caricature, and devised a look that was as fresh as it was Bolshevik.
We created a campaign inspired by Soviet propaganda posters that featured a fiery red illustration of the acclaimed Frank Gehry designed music hall. This experience helped us to realize that we have a particular knack for designing for public arts institutions, and ultimately led to our creative collaboration with the Los Angeles Theatre Center.
