CHALLENGING BEGINNINGS

Moon began life as a small company dedicated to presenting concert versions of “forgotten” shows — musicals from the Golden Age of Broadway that had disappeared from public memory. Unfortunately, as their production values and audiences dwindled, it was usually all too clear why they’d been forgotten in the first place.

In 2016, new Artistic Directors took the company over from its founders and set about changing its mission: Moon would shift its focus and repertoire to musicals that were either new, relevant, or made newly relevant.

I was brought aboard to take over the branding portion of the process. The idea was to start with a logo that felt structural, with great architecture and clean lines, that hinted at the Art Deco of the company’s (and Broadway’s) past, but didn’t trap the company in it.

One major problem: That name! “42nd Street Moon” is a quaint old piece of Broadway slang that was used to refer to the lights of 42nd Street. It’s a name that’s neither versatile, relevant, mellifluous, nor universal… but the name was staying…

Our answer was a purely typographic logo treatment using geometry as a jumping-off point. The 4 and the 2 were redrawn to connect seamlessly and to give the piece a positive, upward eyeflow. The primary logo has only one color: black. The reverse versions can use either white or a pale yellow, on top of either black or deep blue — suggestive of a night sky, which is the only reference to the moon in the logo. Like the lights of Midtown, the glow here isn’t about celestial bodies, but about theatrical signage.

Keeping the logo geometric also meant that it could adapt in many different ways to any situation at hand. 3D to evoke Hollywood studio logos? Like a lit marquee? Rainbow-filled for Pride? No problem. The structure of the logo is strong enough to keep its integrity no matter what you fill it with or how you treat it.

The basic architecture of the logo created a visual language that we could use for subsidiary brands as well: Moon School, the education arm of the theater, a 25th Anniversary brandmark, and initiatives like Back to Back (a presentation of musicals with the plays they’re based on), The Sondheim Sweep (a commitment to producing all the musicals of Stephen Sondheim), and Moon Beams (streamed content during the Covid shutdown).