La Dottoressa Project
Logo | Business Cards | Brand Identity | Flyer

“La Dottoressa” is a brand identity project designed for a modern theatrical play in New York City which is primarily focused on the life and action of Maria Montessori. For the project we have been asked to design the logo, the business cards and the stationery designs as well as to define the plays corporate identity.

In terms of symbolism, our logo is particularly clear and straight-forward. We have designed by hand the portrait of young Maria Montessori using bamboo spark by Wacom. We have then refined the sketch in Photoshop and finalized the logo in order to seem like a well-designed stencil painting. It has been absolutely crucial to use Montessori’s image when being young in order to highlight her eternal educational spirit and the importance of her ideas which remain fresh until today. For the business cards, we used an image showing Montessori with a young student. In this image, Maria Montessori is older. We have used this image in order to highlight the tenderness and kindness of the persona.

The reason we have used two images of Maria Montessori – one of her being younger and another one of her being older – is that we wanted to create a conceivable narration of her great contribution in education. The two different points in her life symbolize her dedication in developing a unique and effective educational system.

In terms of style, we wanted to link the musical with modern times. Since the play is new, we wanted to create something bold and stylish yet fresh and modern. Additionally, since the play is based on the life of a real character, we wanted to attract a group of audience spanning from young people to seniors. Thus, we tried to approach classic images in a modern way.
The typeface of the logo combines effectively a classic font with a modern one in order to create an interesting contrast. We have used black, white and grey shades in terms of color in order to create coherence with the overall concept. Yet again, we have also used yellow color which is the most luminous color of the spectrum to create a link with notions such as light and luminosity. This has been used for two reasons, first of all in order to support the musicals tag line “Light Within” and to make a clear statement regarding Montessori’s contribution in modern education.