The Drowsy Chaperone is a fun, celebratory love letter to classic musical theatre of the 1920’s and 30’s told through the framing device of a man reminiscing by listening to his favorite record. When creating a brand identity for this show, it was important for me to blend the two time periods of the show together through visuals. My solution to this was to combine both modern high-res photography with a classic illustration style inspired by posters and commercial art from the early 1930’s.
It was important that the visual identity of the show felt new and exciting but at the same time timeless and nostalgic. To achieve this, I turned to posters from the golden age of movie musicals for inspiration for the typography and color scheme.
In order to capture the celebratory atmosphere of the musical, I needed to create an icon that would be instantly recognizable and suitable for a variety of advertising materials. In order to fill this need I created “Drowsy Girl”. “Drowsy Girl” does not represent a specific character or moment in the show but instead captures the mood and tone of the experience overall. “Drowsy Girl” became a mascot for the show and I provided me with the flexibility to create illustrations of her in different poses that better suited to different size ratios of advertising materials without sacrificing any recognizability.
