A Catered Affair: the Most Boring Logo Ever?

First, the substantive news: the new Harvey Fierstein/John Bucchino musical A Catered Affair will play the recently vacated Walter Kerr, lately the venue for my dearly departed Grey Gardens. (In the interim, the Kerr will host a limited engagement of Chazz Palminteri's A Bronx Tale.)

The cast for A Catered Affair will include Fierstein (Uncle Winston), Faith Prince (Aggie), Tom Wopat (Tom Hurley), Matt Canvenaugh (Ralph Halloran), and Leslie Kritzer (Jane Hurley). Also featured in the cast will be Heather MacCrae and Kristin Zbornik.

OK, enough with the names and the links, already. I include them all not out of any desire to be encyclopedic in my coverage, but rather to increase the hits that my blog gets from search engines. More names and links means more page views, and more page views means a greater audience, and a greater audience means more validation for my worth as a human being. It's the little things, really.

Anyway, now for the catty bitchery. Take a look at the logo for A Catered Affair. (See jpg above.) Could it be more dull? White background with gold, italic lettering: Yipee. It's certainly simple, but does it make you want to see the show? I mean, I'll see it anyway, but the logo certainly doesn't create any positive brand associations, if you'll pardon my marketing speak.

I'm not positive that this is the final design, but it's what BroadwayWorld.com included as accompanying art when it wrote about Harvey Fierstein's blog for the show. But it did get me thinking about the importance of branding, specifically logo design, to the marketing and ultimate success of a Broadway musical. There's no direct correlation, of course.

Bad shows can have good logos:

   

 

Bad shows can have bad logos:

 

   

Good shows can have good logos:   

   

 

Good shows can have bad logos:

 

 

But good, strong, clear design can go a long way towards creating awareness for a show. And awareness translates into ticket sales. If the producers of A Catered Affair decide to go with the bland logo pictured above, then they can only hope that good word of mouth and great reviews will help make up for a forgettable visual identity.

Comments

[maninchair.com]

And then there's the Billy Elliot poster in Shubert Alley that just has a picture of Billy jumping in the air, with no title or show information on it. Bold move...