VANCOUVER—Branding and design company Subplot Design recently released their new campaign for the Vancouver Recital Society’s 30th anniversary season. The campaign includes designs for a brochure, postcards, banners, concert programs and print ads. This marks the fifth year Subplot has worked with the recital company. However, Subplot partner and creative director Roy White admits this year was the most challenging.

VRS has been battling to book venues due to the upcoming 2010 Olympics. This challenged Subplot to create more innovative designs that will attract former and new subscribers. Both parties also wanted to cuts costs due to the current economic recession. This led the Vancouver-based design company to choose the concept of being “stripped down,” while highlighting VRS’s classical artists at the same time.

True to its namesake, the designs for the “All Performance, No Nonsense” campaign prided itself in simplicity. All of the promotional materials used only black, white and gray hues. White says, “There was zero need for dressing this up other than the fact that we are bringing you an amazing array of talent and spectacle this season. Essentially it was really an exercise in undesigning it and letting the artists and the quality of the artists speak for themselves.” The brochure, which is sent to the society’s subscribers, was also cut down from 40 to 24 pages.

 

Typography played an important role in the design. Bolder typefaces Toronto Gothic and Woodgrit were used instead of last year’s fancy script font.

“All Performance, No Nonsense” will run until the end of July. Subplot is currently finalizing templates for 30 to 40 print ads that will appear in the Georgia Straight, the Vancouver Sun and The Province for individual VRS events. Contact: www.subplot.com