Choosing a favourite logo I’ve designed would be a hard challenge but I don’t know if any would top this one. I love it and not often do you say that about your own work. Off The Rails Dance is a Belfast based dance company committed to creating daring and inspiring works that entertain, challenge and push the boundaries of dance as a theatrical form.

The Logo

A good logo can be very powerful, it can elevate you. Giving a humble company creditability that can compete with bigger, well established brands. I wanted to design a logo for Off the Rails that would match the ambition of their production that were constantly overdelivering compared to their resources.

The previous logo had served the company since it was established but started to show its age. Technically it didn’t scale well and was hard to read at small sizes and started to pixelate when blown up to large sizes.

I based the new logo on Futura by Paul Renner. Dropping down to the companies initials with bold, graphic letters with softened corners. The customised ‘R‘ makes the logo distinct and recognisable whilst still being a legible letterform.

Branding

Off the Rails are a company that sweat the details. Everything from the lighting of the show to the programmes are intentionally designed. During the production of The Dutiful Wife we created a programme that would resemble a tabloid newspaper.

The programme came in two variants as the show had two possible endings/interpretations. “He’s still our guy” one headline reads or “A leader disgraced” if the scandal goes public.

The was a super challenging programme to design. Kudos to those who work in the design department of printed news. We had to take into consideration how the paper would be printed. We could afford 8 page newspaper, that meant x2 4 page programmes, one of each ending. Ensuring these pages were in the correct order was a head scratcher. We managed though.