A.A. Trabucco-Campos and Pràctica's identity for the Irvington Theater puts the fun in functional

First opening its doors to theatregoers in 1902, the Irvington Theater – formerly the Irvington Town Hall Theater – is the oldest art centre in the state of New York. In 2019, alongside a new ambitious arts programme, the Irvington Theater approached NYC-based designer A.A. Trabucco-Campos and Barcelona and New York-based design studio Pràctica to overhaul their brand identity. Working collaboratively, they have developed guidelines for the theatre’s identity, as well as continuing to work closely with the internal design team. The core of the identity is typographic; thriving with the basis of Irvington Modern Gothic, a custom-drawn revival of Modern Gothic from 1897, supported by the plethora of fonts from The Pyte Foundry. The dynamic duo ended up designing five additional weights from their initial interpretation of Modern Gothic, eventually selecting SemiBold as the weight used across the entire identity. The striking but welcoming display type acts as the harmonious antithesis to the wild vibrance of late-nineteenth-century wood-inspired typefaces built by The Pyte Foundry. In 2016 the foundry produced a free weekly font inspired by the often-ignored typographic history of the designs created in-and-around the industrial revolution. With the project resulting in 52 typefaces, Trabucco-Campos and Pràctica saw the opportunity to implement this vivacious range within the Irvington Theater’s brand. “Offering a range of freedom and tangible constraints”, Trabucco-Campos and Pràctica explain, “is usually a winning combination for good design”.