Happystorm Theatre
About a decade ago, possibly in 2011, I sat in a lecture room at Salford University and met the founding members of Happystorm Theatre. Proudly Salfordian, they had contacted their local university for guidance on a logo for their performing arts group. My contribution was kindly selected from a diverse collection of possible solutions. Though I was reasonably proud of what I had produced, I knew the solution was at best incomplete, and at worst, plain inadequate. A decade later I decided to revisit the design and produce a solution that was a little more cohesive and, well, better than my previous effort.
Using the central theme of theatre’s ‘comedy and tragedy’ masks, the original logo played on a visual representation of the name Happystorm, by incorporating umbrellas to make up the features of the comedy mask, and the use of ‘Salford Pink’ as a strong reference to the group’s community roots. I decided to consolidate that theme by distilling the icon even further, into its simplest form, almost to the point of abstraction. The result is fun and playful which democratises theatre, informalising it from the lofty echelons of society and into the hands of grassroots communities like Salford.
