Esprit Orchestra

Developing a bold, striking visual identity for an orchestra devoted to cutting-edge contemporary music.

Esprit Orchestra is Canada’s only full-sized, professional orchestra dedicated to performing and promoting new orchestral music. Puncture was tasked with refreshing their visual identity, moving away from a traditional look to one that embodies Esprit’s innovative spirit.

The new identity is dynamic, expanding to create a space that establishes Esprit as a stage for new music and culture. The open wordmark frames the people behind the music—musicians, composers, and soloists—and invites the audience to explore new music with curiosity. With a vibrant colour palette, captivating imagery, and poetic language, this refreshed identity resonates with those seeking a fresh perspective on orchestral music.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingDigital

espritorchestra.com

Founded in 1983, Esprit Orchestra’s commitment to delivering thought-provoking and unexpected musical experiences distinguishes it as one of the few organizations of its kind globally. By collaborating with leading composers, premier soloists, and ensembles from Canada and abroad, Esprit showcases Canadian works alongside international premieres each season. With unique, one-time-only performances, every concert is a rare, exclusive event. Esprit also nurtures the next generation of new music professionals and audiences through its mentorship and outreach programs.

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Choice Eastway and Caledon
CAMH Virtual Tour
Fit4Less
Mabelle Arts

Helping to unlock the creative potential of the neighbourhood.

Mabelle Arts brings people together across real and perceived differences through shared activities. They prioritize action over conversation, focusing on fun and creative projects with tangible impacts, including economic opportunities for participants. They believe that by working together, strangers can become neighbors and friends. The resulting social capital strengthens communities, fostering celebration in good times and solidarity during challenges.

Mabelle Arts engaged Puncture during a pivotal time of redefining their strategy, mission, and vision, while undertaking a major community-driven park revitalization project. As part of the project, a new building called The Belle, was being constructed to become a landmark for the park and a cornerstone for the community to engage in arts, culture and with one other. Taking on a visual identity and website refresh, Puncture’s goal was to capture the the evolution of Mabelle Arts and their presence as a lifeline within the community.

Understanding the impact of the park and significance of The Belle, the visual identity embraces the unique angles of the building’s roofs to communicate the idea of overlap, intersection, and connection. The angles influence the logo, design system and monogram.

Using the same shape from the monogram, an asterisk motif was created to suggest the idea of “more” and to create a simple framework for their language and messaging.

Altogether these angles, asterisks and bright colour palette captures the positivity and strength Mabelle Arts brings throughout their work and community while also lending itself to communicate the diversity of their programming and what they do.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingDigital

mabellearts.ca

Founded in 2007 by Executive Director Leah Houston, Mabelle Arts launched out of a highly successful four year residency on Mabelle Avenue. Since then, Mabelle Arts has grown into an innovative and sustainable charity with strong roots in community-engaged arts, grassroots community development and placemaking. With a yearly budget of $1 million, Mabelle Arts has grown into a strong and stable organization with deep roots in our local community.

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Toronto Biennial of Art
6 Degrees
Yonge-Dundas Square
Canadian Country Music Awards

Celebrating Canada’s biggest night in country music with glamour.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingMotion

The Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization committed to the promotion and recognition of Canadian country music. Built upon the foundation to educate, elevate and celebrate Canadian talent, the CCMA progressively heralds the spirit, community and creativity that country music fosters.

Each year, the Canadian Country Music Association honours its members who have excelled during the past year, with a Canadian Country Music Association Award. The CCMA turned to Puncture to elevate their look with glamour and create visually stunning marketing assets for the 2024 awards show in Edmonton, Alberta.

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Fit4Less
CBC Exhibitionists
Robert McLaughlin Gallery
SafeFest

Creating a highly visible and recognizable brand for a team dedicated to safety at music festivals.

Working with C3 Presents—the force behind top music festivals such as Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza—Puncture was tasked with creating the visual identity for SafeFest; all with the goal of standing out in a crowded and visually dense festival environment.

We developed the SafeFest hand raised in the air—a universal symbol representing a need for help, wanting attention, or having a question. It’s a gesture that is intuitive and can be understood quickly.

The Safest Hand also serves as a mascot for the brand. It takes on a positive and fun persona with its different hand gestures. It’s meant to make asking for help feel more accessible, differentiating itself from EMT or Police.

We paired the hand with a bright neon safety yellow. It’s meant to draw attention from a distance, in the dark, or under impairment. It’s a non-authoritative colour that will encourage festival goers to ask for help and watch out for each other.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
Branding

SafeFest is a brand new team dedicated to creating a safe space for music festival patrons by providing an additional resource that isn’t medical or security.

Launched in 2023, SafeFest found it’s way to many festivals, including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, and Austin City Limits and will continue to be present at festivals on an ongoing basis. If you need any assistance at an upcoming C3 festival, look for the helping hand or the SafeFest team in yellow T-shirts!

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Canadian Country Music Awards
The Filmmakers
Tracks on Tracks
Canadian Stage

Creating a dynamic and accessible visual identity; leading to sold-out performances and industry acclaim.

Canadian Stage’s mission is to be the leading contemporary performing arts organization in the country. They came to Puncture in 2021 to refresh their master brand; they wanted to move away from being seen as a “contemporary art/intellectual/elitist” organization, towards something that was more accessible, reflecting “the art of today.”

After an in-depth research and discovery phase, the master brand we created for the organization is punctuated by a straight bold line, representing a stage. This line underscores the logo and can be extended to make connections to programming, and can also twist and turn to become more expressive of movement and live performance. A bright yellow that is easily recognizable and welcoming ties the brand together.

Since 2021, we have worked with Canadian Stage annually to create marketing collateral for their seasons, including the season brochure, out-of-home print ads, digital and social ads, video and motion assets, and sub-branding for the Dream in High Park series. For the 2022/23 season we directed and produced a photo and video shoot featuring key actors from the season’s productions, to be featured in all of the marketing collateral.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
Branding

Canadian Stage is one of Canada’s leading non-profit, contemporary performing arts organizations based in Toronto, Ontario. Founded in 1988, the theatre company has since produced over 300 shows with a focus on multidisciplinary work, text adaptation, programming international contemporary theatre, and developing and producing new Canadian works. Canadian Stage also continues to promote theatre to younger audiences, running a series of artist development and education initiatives, as well as youth and community outreach programs.

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Brodflour
Weston Family Foundation
Shorefast
plazaPOPS

Building a new website and visual assets for a community organization that transforms underused spaces into accessible gathering places.

The new website for plazaPOPS captures the energy of suburban main streets in Toronto, using a vibrant colour palette and expressive street sign motifs.

Industry
Arts & CultureNon-Profit

Service
BrandingDigital

plazapops.ca

plazaPOPS is a non-profit organization that transforms parking lots and other under-invested spaces, into free, safe and accessible gathering places. Largely located along suburban main streets where vibrant culture already exists, plazaPOPS partners with these local community groups, landowners and businesses, to support and celebrate these vital connections.

Their initiatives impact many different communities, in which Puncture was asked to create a new website that helps visualize and showcase the value that’s being created. The website captures the organization’s playful personality and forward-thinking initiatives, and provides an infrastructure for their events, programming and research—creating an open invitation for everyone to get involved.

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ORXSTRA
Fit4Less
Robert McLaughlin Gallery
Yonge-Dundas Square

Celebrating 20 years of connection, community, culture, and diversity in a prominent Toronto public space.

Yonge-Dundas Square is a unique focal point of the downtown Toronto community. The square is designated for use as a public open space and as a unique event location. The square has a rich history and is a meeting point for the arts, community and culture.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
Branding

In celebration of it’s 20th year, the team at Yonge-Dundas Square worked with Puncture to create a brand campaign to celebrate this anniversary. The campaign was inspired by five important themes: connection, community, culture, together, and diversity. The foundation of the system uses bright colours, historical photos and text, all on a square grid — inspired by the concrete squares at Yonge-Dundas Square.

The design highlighted the Square’s diverse history and also helped advertise events over the 2023 summer period. The on-site work helped add to the vibrancy and excitement of events at the Square. Our team is looking forward to seeing what will happen next at Yonge-Dundas Square!

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Patel
Choice Properties
CBC Exhibitionists
Robert McLaughlin Gallery

A brand refresh and new website design for the largest public art gallery in the Durham Region.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (The RMG) engaged Puncture in 2021 at a time when they were establishing a new strategic plan with a fresh mission and vision. Puncture took on both a visual identity refresh and a complete website redesign with the goal of better reflecting the RMG’s updated mission, collection, and cultural presence in the region. 

Emphasizing the RMG’s artist-centered and community-focused approach was a significant goal for the project. We achieved that by opening up the RMG’s logo, and creating a playful colour palette and inviting layouts for the website

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingDigital

Website Development
Helios Design Lab

Gallery Photography
Darren Rigo

rmg.on.ca

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is the largest public art gallery in the Durham Region of Ontario, Canada. It houses a compelling collection of modern and contemporary Canadian art numbering over 4500 works. They are an artist-centered and community-oriented public art gallery that brings people from diverse backgrounds together to engage with art that inspires new perspectives, generates meaningful conversations, and creates a sense of belonging.

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Canadian Stage
Esprit Orchestra
Tracks on Tracks
Tafelmusik

Helping a world-renowned Baroque orchestra invite new audiences in, with a simple and bold brand identity.

Tafelmusik, a world-renowned Baroque orchestra and choir, tasked Puncture with refreshing their visual identity and communication platform. Their main goals were to increase and diversify their audience and donor base. It was very important that the new brand honored the past while embracing the present—they needed to show they were moving forward without alienating their current audience.

We built a new brand strategy, positioning and communication toolkit. The entire brand is rooted in the idea of sharing beauty, which foregrounds all of Tafelmusik’s performances and is the reason why so many people have dedicated their lives to this music. We landed on “Tafelmusik invites audiences to engage with beauty through evocative live music experiences” as the brand position.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
Branding

Taking the cue of “sharing beauty,” we developed a succinct visual identity that’s equipped to handle new and changing sub-brands, a rich colour palette and elegant imagery. The identity is informed by the beauty, symmetry and colour found in baroque art and architecture, which is emblematized in the signature diamond wordmark we created. The masterbrand was built with flexibility in mind, it expands to create unique season identities that incorporate new imagery and colours that are inspired by the season’s performances.

We continue to work with Tafelmusik on their marketing and content creation on an ongoing basis. This includes creative direction of season identities, signage, print and digital pieces, email and digital marketing, video series, and a seasonal magazine.

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Patel
Sidewalk Labs
Fit4Less
Dream in High Park

For Canadian Stage’s summer performance series, a visual identity that dreams.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingMotion

A return to the company’s original summer moniker, Dream in High Park is Canadian Stage’s transformed summer programming series. Dream in High Park is one of Canada’s largest and longest running outdoor professional theatre events, taking place at the High Park Amphitheatre, and welcoming over 30,000 audience members to the park each year. The transformed program features a shift from the usual summer Shakespeare fare to a diverse array of events including theatre, dance, comedy, contemporary and baroque music, and so much more. 

Canadian Stage engaged Puncture to design a new visual identity to express this exciting vision, featuring a logo with a dynamic voice and a colour palette that dreams.

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Art Toronto
Canadian Country Music Awards
Yonge-Dundas Square