Adventures in Design: Moulin Montalvo

Every other year at Montalvo Arts Center, a hallmark event was held: a black tie gala with a fundraising goal of at least $500,000. I had the pleasure of being involved in supporting the execution of this event in different ways, but one of the most fundamental was being asked to develop the branding identity for the event. In 2018, I was especially excited: the gala planning committee had settled on a Moulin Rouge theme. I developed the name for the evening -- Moulin Montalvo: A Gala Night in Montmartre -- and got to work trying to come up with the imagery. 

With a theme as multilayered as Moulin Rouge, there are a number of directions that you can go. The planning committee told me that I had carte blanche, so where I went first was to imagery from the film. 

But when I presented this design to the committee, their response was mixed. They liked the colors, especially the gold, but they were concerned that the use of so much dark blue and sparkly lights made the branding too reminiscent of the upcoming Bruce Munro: Stories in Light exhibition. So I had to come up with something else. 

I still thought that the windmill was iconic, so I tried a few treatments using the contemporary Moulin Rouge. I also wrote some descriptive copy.

The committee again wasn't thrilled. They were concerned that this imagery wasn't sufficiently festive.

Taking inspiration from the artwork for the cover of the Moulin Rouge soundtrack (above), I tried the treatment at right. 

The verdict was that it looked too "Wild West." And as much as I liked it, I had to admit that unless you had seen the album cover (which most of our target audience hadn't) you wouldn't make the visual connection. Back to the drawing board! 

​Then good luck struck!

I was flipping through one of my poster catalogues for inspiration, and lo and behold, I discovered this graphic running across the bottom of one of the pages. I was thrilled!

​I showed the image to the committee, who were equally thrilled... except that they didn't love that the dancing girls were standing on their heads. A little photoshop magic was applied to set the ladies on their feet, and our graphic identity was established. And I ran with it!