Building a typographic system for Prague City Theatre with Adelle
- Project Date
- March 2012
- Date
- March 2012
Adelle was used as the core typeface for Prague City Theater, supporting a clear, consistent identity across a complex cultural institution. The project demonstrates how a contemporary serif can function as a flexible, durable typographic system in everyday graphic design practice.
Městká divadla prazská (Prague City Theatre) is an important institution in Prague’s cultural life, located in the city centre. It consists of two scenes with a rich history, different repertoire and audience, theatre ABC and Rococo. The two separate visual identities were brought together into one during a significant rebranding in 2006. The new unified identity, with a distinctive green-black-white colour combination, primarily communicated the abbreviation MDP (Městká divadla prazská) as the new brand name. However, even after years of targeted communication, it failed to firmly anchor the main brand of MDP.
A change was needed. The requirement for uniformity of style remained, but the structure of the brand expanded to better duplicate the real role of individual actors, creating the main logotype and further developing the logo for the umbrella institution and the individual scenes. Historically, there was no common symbol, so a very typographically based logo was chosen featuring Adelle supported by Encore (Parachute foundry). It plays with the composition of individual words.
The inspiration for the final version was the map of the house, where the theatre is located. It is a labyrinth of alleyways and passages that resemble a tangle of city streets. The map belongs to the city as well as a theater to the life in the city. People need to orientate themselves not only the streets but also within culture. Městká divadla prazská is a theater for everyone. Each graphic layout is like a section of a map, with variable detail, where each color area resemble blocks of houses and the thick white lines between them are streets. The color scheme was maintained; Rococo theater remained black, ABC Theatre has a green color. An important element of communication are photographs and illustrations that are clean and free of text. They act as a visual stage with their own tale undisturbed by typography.
