The Mono/Poly campaign involved creating key art, digital media, merch, videos, and an online “What Mono/Poly Character Are You? Quiz”. This campaign was for the 2019 world premiere, however, in 2017, the show was produced as a 3-day showcase. As such, they had a pre-existing logo, photos from a photo shoot, and interview footage. I worked with the creator/director to modify the logo font and placement of the gender symbols used in the logo. I created trading cards and buttons as well as edited the interview footage into short videos to be used in a Seed & Spark campaign. Before we launched, however, they were able to secure funding so we used the videos for social media advertising and the merch as prizes for social media contests.
Mono/Poly Key Art
When designing the key art that became the poster for the show, I initially decided to use images from the 2017 photoshoot. I blurred the faces of the actors as we weren’t sure if all of the actors from the initial run would reprise their roles. Thinking about the future use of the piece, not only for the show in 2019 but for any subsequent licensed productions of the show, the team decided that it would be better to create key art that didn’t lean into previous casting so it could be used no matter who the cast ended up being. For the next concept, I wanted to showcase the polyamorous aspect of the show while keeping the stylization from the first concept. From there the creative team wanted to see a version without the wedding dress and with a less-stylized look. I wanted to add a bit of sexiness to this next draft, but the team felt that the people at the bottom were a bit too distracting. The following drafts were all tweaks to the concept to find the right amount of sexiness, add more diversity in the people represented in the imagery, and find the best placement of various elements.
Digital Media
I created various digital media for this show. Some of them involved resizing the key art for various uses—ticketing and review sites, social media posts, etc—and others involved coming up with creative ways to advertise on social media and get the cast to share show imagery on their channels. The show had a social media manager so I created branded border transparent PNG files for them to use so they could add text or imagery inside of the border as an easy way to brand each post with important show info. I utilized photos taken during the dress rehearsal, headshots, and illustrations I made for show merch to create animated gifs for each of the cast members. I created general show Facebook covers and Instagram post images and then created versions that featured cast members for each person in the show. I created a specific Instagram ad for a discounted Halloween show as well as Instagram takeover post images with the cast/crew member info for whoever was taking over for that day.
You can view the digital media I created for the show below. I included some of the Instagram post images I created for use in the Seed & Spark campaign that we ended up not needing to run. You can view everything by pressing the “All” button or view one or the other by pressing the corresponding button.
Merch
This was a really fun part of the campaign for me to design, because I LOVE merch. I have always loved free branded items and in a past life, even worked at a custom branded item company—I know more now about t-shirts than I ever thought possible. I created trading cards, buttons/pins, a temporary tattoo, and a tote bag.
Trading Cards
The trading cards presented a unique challenge—to create character cards that accurately represented the characters without knowing what those characters would look like as the show had yet to be cast. I realized that each character’s personality could be represented by the clothes they wear, so I leaned into that idea to create cards that give the viewer an idea about who the character is rather than what they look like.
Buttons / Totes / Tattoos
I really enjoy playing with typography styles and placement to create cool designs that literally say something, so these were really great to work on. Some of the wording on the buttons came from the show, some from the production team, and others from me based on my knowledge of the show. The creative team selected a few of the designs to print, we used the “All Relationships Are Valid” text for the tote, and the combined gender symbols for the tattoos. In addition to being used as part of the social media contest prizes, some of the buttons and tattoos were placed on tables at the opening party so people could take them to go along with leftovers!
Interview Videos
In 2018, the team who shot the interview footage, edited a sizzle reel to help secure funding for the 2019 show. When the production team decided to run a Seed & Spark campaign, they realized we needed shorter snippets to explain what the show is about and why people should contribute. There were hours of interview footage to use, so I went through it all and came up with video concepts/titles based on the footage we had and edited together the final pieces below. Though they didn’t end up doing the Seed & Spark campaign, they used these on their site and YouTube channel. They decided to keep them as-is and not make changes to the final slides requesting contributions to the campaign, which is why those mention contributions rather than purchasing tickets.
“What Mono/Poly Character Are You?” Quiz
We thought it would be fun to create a quiz for people to take to determine how similar they are to each character in the show. I created the questions based on my knowledge of the script and show and built it using the Interact Quiz Maker. You can take a look and find out if you’re more of a Bridget or a Miles here: Mono/Poly Character Quiz.