SCOPE OF WORK

- Website

- Branding

ROLE

- Web design, UI/UX design

- Graphic design

DATE

- 2017-2019

As a theatrical production company in the age of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, Trinity Repertory Company (Trinity Rep) had three main concerns:

1. Waning excitement for live performances 

2. A significant drop in season subscription rates

3. Disjointed branding and marketing efforts that missed their goals

The Gravity Switch team and I were brought in to help remedy these issues by designing and building a new website that captured the brand emotions and feelings they wanted to convey while also increasing engagement and sales for the theatre. The website would also need to establish a visual language that could then be used in other marketing and promotional efforts, such as email promotions and event materials.

To meet these goals, we first sat down with the Trinity Rep team to see how they described themselves. Intimate, raw, gritty, unexpected, and engaging were all words that came up during this exploration phase. They also emphasized that they wanted to honor their roots as an established theatre company operating out of a gorgeous historical building in downtown Providence, Rhode Island.

With this information in hand, I set to work gathering design inspiration, creating mood boards, and developing rough creative directions for homepage elements to determine what visual approach and layout  resonated most with Trinity Rep. The visual vocabulary that was ultimately selected included:

— Large, bold photography pulled from their library of live performances to engage the user and give them a taste of “being there”

— Non-traditional shapes and layouts to capture the raw, gritty feeling that Trinity Rep wanted to convey without sacrificing sophistication

— Earth tone color palette that leaned traditional to anchor the contemporary design while preventing it from being too modern

— Interactive animations that create engagement and a sense of delight 

Our foundational work for the website, which Trinity Rep’s designer carried forward in their other marketing and promotional materials, resulted in a contemporary new brand that’s bold, fresh, energetic, and effective. It helped Trinity Rep to reverse the years-long trend in declining subscriptions. For only the second time in about a decade, subscriptions are up and, when Gravity Switch last checked with them, were on track to meet their subscription goal.