PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Music is one of humanity’s most powerful creations—it meets us at our emotional center. However, ‘classical’ music suffers from a PR problem: it is too often perceived as unchanging, dusty, old-world music for elites.

The San Francisco Symphony is a 108-year old cultural legend with a deep legacy of rewriting rules to advance the relevance of orchestral arts. As the organization began planning a DEI-focused repositioning of classical music for the 21st century, COLLINS was invited to help clarify, define and express this new vision.

Our aim was to help the Symphony re-assert classical music as a global contemporary art form—all while staying rooted in their community and strengthening the bonds that have made them so successful for over a century.

As the Symphony experiments with emerging technologies, our work’s heart lies in new digital, sonic, and typographic experimentation. A responsive visual system brings to life the dynamic qualities of classical music with variable font technology that enables typographic characters to immediately change form in reaction to sound and music. We also crafted a more expressive voice that juxtaposes the timeless formality of black and white with a contemporary palette inspired by the Bay Area’s local colors.

PROJECT INFORMATION

Entry Type: Single Entry

Channel: Cross-Media

Primary Role of the Designer: Designer as change agent

Client Relationship: Unknown (NA) / Other (if other, please explain) NA

Intention of the Project: Re-launch, redesign, or update of an existing product, service or program

Development Budget: Confidential / Not available

Production/Execution Budget: Confidential / Not Available

Source of Funding: Client

Typefaces: ABC Symphony (custom variable font developed with DINAMO)

Paper:

Materials:

CREDIT INFORMATION

Creative Director: Karin Soukup, Louis Mikolay

Art Director:

Designers: Mackenzie Pringle, Yeun Kim

Researchers:

Developers:

Copywriter: Paul Jun

Illustrator:

Photographer:

Printer:

Producer:

Other Credits: Karin Fyhrie - Managing Director, Brian Collins - Chief Creative Office, Erik Berger Vague - Senior Designer, Michael Taylor - Senior Designer, Sidney Lim - Senior Designer, Tomas Markevicius - Motion Design Director, Eric Park - Motion Designer, Ivan Cruz - Creative Technologist, Christine Takaichi - Strategist, Ben Crick - Creative, DINAMO

Return to the Gallery