In 2018, Champions worked with Dartmouth College leadership to update the brand. In 2024, we were selected through a competitive bid process to return to campus and help rebrand the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The work was completed and launched in 2025 with the opening of the Daryl & Steven Roth Wing.

The Hop opened in 1962 during a time of significant social change in the United States. It entered a boys-only campus dominated by business and engineering, and was launched as a home – on the college Green – where expression was allowed, even encouraged. All the school mailboxes were housed in The Hop building, so every student since 1962 has passed through its halls.

Today, the Hop celebrates art as central to life but in a space much different than before as renovations and a new wing designed by architecture firm, Snøhetta, have just been completed.

In preparation for the opening of The Hop, Champions was asked to build a brand system that would help tell the story of The Hop as an artery to the Arts at Dartmouth and amplify the Center, the school, the students, and their work worldwide.

The lettering for the college was drawn from local type designer Rudolph Ruzicka’s Dartmouth Medal for the American Library Association. Champions had worked with Jesse Ragan to develop the lettering in 2018. 

We worked with Jesse again to pick The Hop lettering directly out of the college wordmark.  The Hop wanted its brand to be closely tied to the mothership. They were each other’s rocket fuel. Here we just muscled the lettering up a bit and we were done.

The Hopkins Center for the Arts has been known as The Hop since opening day in 1962. Enshrining the familiar name in the branding was a natural step for a place everyone knew and loved.

Beyond walls of campus it was critical to bind the Hop name with the Dartmouth name.

For that, we pulled from another Ruzicka moment the bicentennial plaque installed on the building itself.

Executive director, Mary Lou Aleskie, had formed a vision to launch new works from The Hop out into the world beyond Hanover.

The Hop seal introduces a new visual language to the Dartmouth college-wide brand that elevates the Center and School both.

Promotional materials for every show are produced in-house by one fulltime graphic designer. On average, The Hop totals 400 promotional pieces a year. The new design system streamlines production by way of a suite of shapes inspired by both the original architecture and the new addition.

A possibly infinite number of configurations at every scale and proportion allow for the system to fit every promotional poster, presentation, and social media graphic. 

A challenge faced by cultural institutions from Carnegie Hall to The Hop is that they must work with art provided by the performers. A successful graphic system will flex with the assets provided.

The Hop frames can be used singularly, combined to form a new shape, or expanded and cropped to form a frame. They can hold type or image. And, when needed, they can serve as the image themselves.

The Hop places the performer above all else. All promotional imagery is provided by the performer and meant to be amplified by the brand. Every event need to look fresh and different and specific and – most importantly – appropriate to the story it was telling.

Type, shape, and color work together to activate the canvas and draw an audience to the show, move people around the building, or telegraph departmental needs in equal measure. It’s a system that has to do it all.

With the rebrand in 2018, the College adopted National 2 because it was a great contrast to Dartmouth Ruzicka.  National 2 includes historical references, like old style figures, but has a simplicity and clarity that is distinctly modern, which builds flexibility into the visual identity system. 

The new Daryl & Steven Roth Wing introduced a new condensed typeface to the building, so we introduced National 2 Condensed Bold to the brand’s type system. The new cut of the font meets the functional and experiential needs of syncing the system with the space.

Working with one performer-provided image was a specific challenge. Working with several performer provided images was a wholly different challenge. 

While keeping the tool kit lean, we wanted to ensure that The Hop team had all they needed to make work that was fresh and appropriate. 

The work had to break through the visual clutter on campus and be scannable as students passed by to class. It needed to look totally alien and also get people to the show on time.