Retro Playbill Design

[somechrysanthemumtea]

Posted: 9/30/15 at 12:04pm

may seem redundant but i feel maybe someone here will have more insight on the classic designs for playbills that shows have been using recently - skylight, the flick, a view from the bridge - all coincidentally produced by scott rudin. does anyone know why/how this came about, if it wasn't just because rudin wanted to? do you think he is going to continue to do this? i could see it working for blackbird/the crucible, but not so much for shuffle along. anyways just love the design and want to know more! 

[Kad]

Posted: 9/30/15 at 12:19pm

Double post.

Updated On: 9/30/15 at 12:19 PM

[Kad]

Posted: 9/30/15 at 12:23pm

Curiously, I don't think there was ever a statement made about why these productions received retro-style Playbills.

[Steve C.]

Posted: 9/30/15 at 12:36pm

It's really interesting to me just to go through the Playbill Vault and look at all these "vintage" Playbills and the styles and how they've changed and evolved. You can spend hours doing this as they go as far back as possible. There's also a member of BWW that's a graphic designer for Playbill but I don't remember his name. He said once in a post he did the rainbow for June this year. It would be a fun party game for theater people showing the covers without the name of the show and having people guess.

[somechrysanthemumtea]

Posted: 9/30/15 at 12:49pm

Kad said: "Curiously, I don't think there was ever a statement made about why these productions received retro-style Playbills. "

I was also very surprised that nothing was ever made of it/explained. Strange, really.

[somechrysanthemumtea]

Posted: 9/30/15 at 12:51pm

Steve C. said: "It's really interesting to me just to go through the Playbill Vault and look at all these "vintage" Playbills and the styles and how they've changed and evolved. You can spend hours doing this as they go as far back as possible. There's also a member of BWW that's a graphic designer for Playbill but I don't remember his name. He said once in a post he did the rainbow for June this year. It would be a fun party game for theater people showing the covers without the name of the show and having people guess."

That is one of my favourite things to do! - yes a great theatre game. The playbillvault is so great in what they do - I just wish they would also catalogue Off Broadway works, though I can see the difficulties, it would be very interesting to see the differences in cast between Off Broadway and Broadway - or differences in Playbill design (a la Fun Home).