Backstory: Our Community Center is home to the Alden Theater, a community-funded performing arts organization. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the theater was forced to cancel many shows and faced the difficult task of pondering what the dramatic arts might look like in a totally different world. After some brainstorming, we debuted the idea of Drive-Thru Drama. Theatergoers enter our parking lot and stop at designated points along the route. At these points, actors perform a monologue (at a safe distance) and the audience never need to leave their car. I was tasked with creating a logo that could effectively convey this radical concept, while keeping it in league with our current branding.

Impact: Drive-Thru Drama has yet to perform its first show (it opens July 3, 2020), but word has already gotten out. Our theater has been featured in national articles in  publications such as The Washington Post and American Theatre magazine. It has drawn far more attention than our small theater is typically accustomed to!

Benefit to Constituents: Our theater (and the entire Community Center) is funded by taxpayer money—but what good is a community theater that can't perform shows? By creating this program we are providing our constituents with an experience that they otherwise wouldn't be able to enjoy, funded by taxes they already paid.

Benefit to the Organization: The Drive-Thru Drama program got our name in the national zeitgeist, and boosted the reputation of our organization by proving that a community gathering space can still be relevant in the COVID era. My logo succeeded in creating the first step towards a unique, visual brand for our creation.

Method: My logo draws from familiar elements of drive-thru theater signage, while incorporating our organization's logo and branding elements such as fonts and color. (See the Alden Theatre logo below.) I first created thumbnails by hand, then began creating more complete proofs in Adobe Illustrator. I delivered 3-4 different possible designs, which were then winnowed down to one.