Carnegie Hall is synonymous with music. The Hall’s legacy of excellence in programming and world-renowned acoustics make it the most admired performance venue in the world, giving great significance to an artist’s “Carnegie Hall debut.” 

Champions worked closely with the in-house Marketing and Creative Services teams to update the brand in order to help bring the transformative power of music to as many people in as many places as possible. The goal was to make everyone feel welcomed in the Hall without compromising on its standard of excellence.

Carnegie Hall celebrates its 130th anniversary in 2021. The venue’s long history brings with it a culture of storytelling and a museum-worthy visual archive. The new identity celebrates the past and readies for the future by assembling a graphic toolkit now prepared to stand the test of time.

In 1919, Carnegie Hall’s architect, William Burnet Tuthill, engineered the iconic facade that makes the Hall what it is today, including the large poster cases around the building’s perimeter featuring “electrically lit stained glass canopies.” The Hall’s most recognizable asset is its name. A wordmark – this wordmark – was the only logo solution that made sense. 

Champions worked with Frere-Jones Type to create a wordmark that incorporates the distinctive features of the poster case lettering and is also optimized for present-day needs.

C – Upper terminal extends into negative space created by the diagonals of the A and the terminals share a common angle. 

A – The apex serif is softened, crossbar lowered,  and outer serifs are shortened to create a more even overall color. 

R – The leg descends below the baseline, and the serif is trimmed to allow for a better relationship with the following letterform. 

The challenge and opportunity of branding a destination is that there’s no faking the intersection of 57th Street and 7th Avenue in New York City. The design must deliver the experience authentically, every time. 

Red carries forward existing brand equity. Rose harkens back to the Hall’s founding and the original color of the seats in Stern Auditorium. And Blue incorporates the brilliant color of the stained glass lettering. 

Together the palette has been optimized to meet strict standards for accessibility and consistency across platforms and mediums, as well as alignment with the real world experience of the place. 

Digital deliverables give us the opportunity to make the magical type literally dance and nothing could be more meaningful to the best performance venue in the world. The primary behavior is left to right movement, a relentless forward momentum appropriate to the Hall’s visionary spirit.

As with type, layout needs to support the diversity of programming put forth by the Hall and also deliver a little musicality. A simple grid, flat color, high-contrast text, and hyper-focus on performer imagery are the ingredients. 

Cropping turns up or tunes down energy, excitement, and expression. A flexible wordmark allows for dramatic contrast in scale. And that magical type brings the emotion. Taken together, they will keep the brand fresh for years to come.

In 1890, the cornerstone was placed and during the ceremony, Andrew Carnegie proclaimed that his Music Hall would be “built to stand for ages.” 

The finest steel from Carnegie’s own mills was used in the Hall’s construction. Almost 125 years later when the upper floors of the building were renovated, a steel beam was discovered that had been embossed with the Carnegie name.

Champions worked with Jesse Ragan to lift the calligraphy from that stamp in the steel. The new monogram brings forward Andrew Carnegie’s visionary spirit, the enduring magic of the Hall, and the power of music to connect us to one another. 

Each season, a fresh new color is temporarily added to the palette. The season’s theme and tone guide the selection of the annual season color.

This differentiates one season from the next and draws a visual connection across programmatic areas which helps with marketing multiple seasons at the same time. 

In addition to a traditional guidelines package, Champions built a brand management system for Carnegie Hall using Adobe XD.

XD’s prototyping capabilities allowed for real time Q&A during rollout and Adobe’s Creative Cloud library’s technology allowed the team to establish one true source for the new brand assets that automatically populate across all Adobe apps.