Role: Creative Director
Team: Led a team of 4–5 designers/artists

Overview

Season 79 was the season where I reworked Alley Theatre's entire season design process from the ground up — introducing in-house studio photography and a two-image release strategy for the first time. The approach became the foundation for every season that followed, including Season 80.

The Challenge

That season's lineup leaned heavily into big, blockbuster-style titles — the kind of stories audiences knew from the screen, now being staged live. The goal was to make going to see a play feel as exciting and event-worthy as going to see a blockbuster movie, which meant the campaign needed a level of visual polish and cinematic energy that the Alley's previous design process wasn't built to produce.

The Approach

To meet that ambition, I rebuilt the process: rather than relying solely on illustrated or found imagery, I introduced studio photography as a core part of the season's visual identity, and designed a two-image release cadence for each show — a strategy that let each production build anticipation in stages rather than revealing everything at once, much like a movie's teaser-then-full-poster rollout. I led the team through the same deep-dive process of understanding each show before developing concepts, then working with leadership to align the new approach with the Alley's brand and goals.

The Work

• A reworked season-wide creative process centered on in-house studio photography
• A two-image release strategy per show, giving each production a staged campaign rollout
• Custom artwork and photography for the season's shows, produced in-house by the creative team
• A visual approach built to give theatre the same "must-see" appeal as blockbuster films