Paula Scher’s iconic Public Theater identity goes to pieces in the campaign for this year’s Shakespeare in the Park, the annual free performances presented by The Public Theater at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. This summer’s program pairs “The Tempest”, Shakespeare’s stormy classic about the magic of storytelling, with the fairy-tale romance “Cymbeline”.
Playing off the word “free,” this year’s design is handmade and exists as lines of sliced typography that are cut through photography or large-scale words. The tempest of type creates a mini-identity that both updates and functions within the familiar Public Theater brand.
The Shakespeare posters are designed by Scher and her team at Pentagram (this year by Scher and designer Jeff Close), and then extended and elaborated into a full system of season graphics by Kirstin Huber , the Public’s art director, and her in-house team of designers, Tammy Shell (graphic designer and photographer) and Kameron Neal (junior graphic designer).
