Denver Philharmonic Orchestra

Friendly • Casual • Passionate • Local

Goals in the Denver Philharmonic’s 2013 rebrand were to attract a wider audience while still maintaining the integrity of the orchestra’s long history in Denver.

The bright, friendly visual identity is rooted in a hand-drawn “dpo” icon and strengthened by ties to the local neighborhood through color and typography. The new look and conversational messaging broke down the barriers that can be associated with classical music.

The result? Average audiences grew from 360 to 1000 per performance.

We continue to assist the DPO with marketing strategy and implementation including key art design, content development, copywriting, social media and maintain their website.

A dramatic shift in voice and tone extended from concert etiquette to concert titles. We dropped the pretense and invited audiences to attend a live music event, not a classical music concert.

With a focus on user experience for performing arts nonprofits and their patrons, we built StageHand, a website template, with all of the design-thinking that we put into our custom sites for organizations like DPO. It offers a leg-up toward a beautiful, custom site that our team at Ligature continues to maintain and improve.

We launched the complete rebrand leading into the 2013–14 season announcement. Ticket sales nearly doubled that season (up from an average of 360 per performance), and the orchestra continues to break attendance records the following three seasons until each of the six main stage concerts were at capacity, averaging around 1,000 patrons per performance.