The Lawrence Chamber Orchestra Rebrand

2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the Lawrence Chamber Orchestra (LCO), a fixture of the Lawrence music community, and so the timing seemed perfect to launch a new identity for the group. They recently hired a new musical director, Steven McDonald, and have made some other sweeping changes to the operations of the orchestra and they have never sounded better! To reflect these changes, the new identity serves to usher in a new era for the group. The primary themes behind the new LCO identity (see logo above) are contrast, layers, and energy. These themes are directly influenced by the music and spirit of the LCO and serve as a conceptual foundation upon which the new identity is built.

This project was also a lot of fun because it was the first time that I got to work with the amazing designer and good friend of mine, Chris Millspaugh. He served as a great sounding board for my ideas and offered up helpful suggestions all along the way.

Here are a couple (of many!) pages of initial sketches that I did before finalizing a few that I wanted to digitize.

Here are the initial digital sketches that I started with. As the field got narrowed down and the concept was further developed, one really jumped out over all the others.

The next images show the identity in action on a few of the many pieces that were designed for the identity system. Total, there were business cards (above), a letterhead, envelope, posters, CD covers, tickets, bookmarks, postcards, and lastly a full redesign of their website!

The letterhead.

Envelope.

Some sample poster designs.

Lastly, the website which was coded from scratch using WordPress for the back-end content management. It’s coded using HTML5 and some CSS3 and it fully responsive, so it scales to fit a wide range of desktop and mobile screens. You can see the website live at www.lawrencechamberorchestra.org and while you’re there, take some time to learn about the LCO! It’s a very talented group that provides a great opportunity to hear live classical music in the Lawrence community.