Baltimore Shakespeare Festival

If swooning theater lovers are cooling their moist brows with your visage 500 years after your death, that’s a pretty amazing legacy. The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival (a beloved pro bono client) sold advertising to local businesses in the form of their names/contact info printed on the back of a cutout of Shakespeare’s head mounted on a stick. These fans were handed out at every show and became a fun tradition for diehards. When BSF received a free placement in the Baltimore Sun’s Reader Rewards, we knew exactly where to start. The ad’s BOGO ticket deal to get bodies in seats (or in the grass since the theater was outdoors) visually centers on the fan, and is designed around a headline paraphrased from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat (we also styled and shot the photo). So the play may be the thing, but the fan? The fan’s THE thing.

In addition to the design and writing for this project, we also art directed and took the photograph.