The Roundabout art is in!

Spring 2007 sees the first Broadway revival of 110 in the Shade with Audra McDonald at Studio 54. This is one of the shows I'm most excited for this season, especially since I work at Roundabout, which is producing the show.

Anyway, the artwork for the show has just been released:

As an intern at Roundabout, I was used, along with my fellow interns, as a sort of a focus group in one of our intern meetings, so I got to see some of the preliminary designs for The Apple Tree and 110 in the Shade.

We saw a lot of early sketches for The Apple Tree using various clipart and people other than Kristin (mock-ups) leading up to the current art (pictured at right). I'm not a big fan of the Apple Tree art because it doesn't feel show-specific. It's Kristin eats an apple on a green background with an odd, generic font. I feel like perhaps a drawing or some sort of bigger concept would have worked better. Of course, at least it's simple and presents the idea of Kristin being in the show (and selling its tickets). When they tried to bring in snakes or trees, things started to get too busy.

After seeing the Apple Tree developing posters, we saw the final four choices for 110. It was down to the chosen design (pictured at top), another that we responded to pretty favorably(dour Audra in a yellow/orange poster with a farmhouse in the background with Audra's eyes closed), and then two more variations on the same themes. The mock-up of the poster seen at the top of this post originally used some concert art featuring Audra in a similar pose, and then they shot the specific photo that they used. That was the one we interns responded to most.

I'm happy that they went with it. I don't know the show too well, but it seems to go well with the theme of blossoming into one's womanhood. The drops of rain are also quite vivid. Also, the concept of the situation of the lettering was intended to brand the show in a way by making the title pop out in an advertisement. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the show a lot more now than I already was (it'll be the last show I experience as an intern there).

My mock-up poster for The Apple Tree.

I spent some time making my own mock-up poster (pictured above) for The Apple Tree in PhotoShop to see if I could do any better. I tried to tie in the titular tree (an image I found here on Google), the Chenoweth photo from the current poster, and the font used for Desperate Housewives (doesn't that picture remind you of Housewives anyway?). It's not much more show-specific, but at least it's a little more interesting without being distracting. Like it better? No? I'm thinking I may start doing this every once in a while when I don't really like a show's artwork.