PART ONE: BAM!

The task: start with a logo built for versatility—not evocative of any one era, but geometric and universal. Rather than have it be on trend, make it adaptable to that it can subsume any design trend that comes along.

The result was a mark that was geometric, energetic, vivid, and capable of being filled with any on-trend color scheme or texture (at the time, polyhedral fills were in vogue).

The logo proved popular—I even began seeing it on tee shirts worn around town. And then BAM! got the cease and desist letter.

It was with a heavy heart that I was told that the Brooklyn Academy of Music—an extremely prestigious BAM for decades upon decades—was asserting its singular rights to the name, and aggressively.

We had to change gears, fast.

Out went BAM! and in came Bay Area Musicals. We kept the vivid colors and faceted look of the original logo, but changed the iconography entirely to focus on the Golden Gate bridge. Placing the bridge silhouette inside a faceted roundel sent the message that Bay Area Musicals was a San Francisco jewel without using the bridge in the same way it had been used over and over again.

The type was a faceted gaspipe form, which complemented the mark well, and its black frame actually stood out more confidently on all our collateral and merch.