Lyric Opera of Chicago

2024-25 Season Art Direction and Omnichannel Applications

Reimagining the 2024-25 Season

In a bold move to revitalize its visual identity for its upcoming season, the Lyric Opera of Chicago partnered with Studio Pax to create a new campaign for its 2024-25 season. This innovative project aimed to evolve a robust and dynamic branding system that not only resonates with the audience but also scales effectively across the multitude of artistic and promotional narratives for each opera.

The campaign’s logline encapsulates its essence:

“Depict an opera experience of thrilling music, theatrical spectacle, and powerful storytelling”

Through a carefully crafted design strategy, the project sought to honor the Lyric Opera’s rich heritage while infusing it with contemporary appeal. The result is to establish a cohesive identity that bridges classic and modern opera, uniquely leverage some existing characteristics of the existing branding while creating a unique voice in Chicago’s cultural landscape.

Poster applications for ads and out of home

Original conceptual designs for the campaign optimized for maximum flexibility at various ratio and for various media. The designs explore a visual storytelling around each opera theme, and are also reflective of the time-period and emotional qualities for each piece.

Modified Layouts based on the original art for various responsive web applications

 Accelerating the conceptual and production process by piloting an AI approach

In our quest to create a very time constrained campaign for the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 2024-25 season, we adopted text AI analysis, image and text generative technologies to impact key aspects of this project : streamline the communication process of diverse stakeholders, enrich and accelerate the creative process, and streamline various production techniques. This approach allowed us to explore more conceptual possibilities, have hybrid roles on the team, work without original assets, iterate faster, shorten the client feedback loop, achieve a cohesive visual output while staying respectful of the original material. Here are some of the ways we leveraged AI across various aspects of the project.

Communication Process Optimization
AI transcribed and analyzed video calls, categorizing discussions into actionable items. This ensured comprehensive and very fast follow-ups, preventing oversights and streamlining creative feedback and project management throughout the campaign development.

Conceptual Exploration
AI-powered brainstorming tools generated mindmaps and verbal explorations for each opera, rapidly exploring themes and visual concepts. This accelerated our ideation process, uncovering unique connections and possibilities. (To the left: bottom-right)

Rapid Visual Mockups
Generative AI altered existing photographs to create quick conceptual mockups, allowing us to experiment with costumes and textures without time-consuming photoshoots or extensive digital manipulation. The translation of conceptual verbal themes into visual themes along with visual reference materials helped explore a wide range of moodboard style visuals. ( To the left: top)

Large-Format Asset Optimization
A combination of various AI scaling tools efficiently produced high-resolution assets for large formats like billboards, dramatically reducing production time while maintaining image quality across various media. It was also possible to use lower quality assets placed in higher resolution mockups while we sourced the original assets for final production purposes. (To the left: bottom-left)

Filling Visual Gaps
Generative AI combined with stock imagery created realistic mockups of missing visual assets at the onset of the process, enabling complete concept visualization without additional photoshoots.