Theater Phönix branding
Designed by Gruppe am Park, the branding for the Theater Phönix in Linz, Austria, is a powerful mix of funky and grotesk. The logo and main headlines are set in Parabole Display, designed by Dávid Molnár in 2019 and published by ECAL Typefaces and Bastardo Grotesk. Parabole is particularly fit for neon signage, with its inside-out effect.
From Gruppe am Park, translated from the German:
Behind the scenes: The Phönix is more than a theater. It is a community, an open space for critical and rebellious spirits. A cultural laboratory for premieres and innovative performance forms. Founded in the eighties as an association, it was the first socially critical off-theater in Linz. The fan base was large and good, but old. The generational change in artistic leadership became an opportunity for transformation.
On stage: Not drama, but high-performance. Or better, the brand relaunch follows the idea of “radical diversity”. To reach fresh, diverse, wide-awake audiences. Each performance forms an unflinching contrast to the bulwark of the educated bourgeois theater landscape. In the process, the classic visual language is taken to task: with high-contrast screenings, plays of light and shadow in harsh black and white, and distortions of text quotations and design elements. All under the new coquettishly flexible logo. Which, by the way, does without the addition of “theater” because everything is theater and everything is possible anyway.
The branding encompasses all signage and the online and offline presence of the theater.
Photography: Zoe Goldstein
