Guelph Chamber Choir

A video showing the story behind the Guelph Chamber Choir logo. Huge thanks to Steve Brown for the sound and voiceover.

A sample poster designed as part of the rebranding. My idea here is to capture the experience of choral music, rather than being literal about showing instruments or performers, creating a more contemporary look. Of course, because of the pandemic, all live performances are on hold.

Guelph Chamber Choir

Early in 2020, I was commissioned to develop a new brand for Guelph Chamber Choir for their 40th anniversary year. I attended a rehearsal and looked at the results of their stakeholder visioning, which emphasized the role of the Choir in building community.

I looked to musical notation for inspiration and was struck by the common-C, the symbol for 4/4 common time. “Common” also means “of the people,” as in “the commons.” Because it also starts with C, I thought it would be a perfect starting point for the logo.

I extended it into a spiral to evoke sound waves or ripples. It also resembles the @-symbol, used to communicate location. And, finally, I added a swash at the end to make it look like the letter G.

For the wordmark and accompanying typography, I used the new sans-serif Plak Neue, based on 1930s poster typography by Paul Renner. Note the stylized lower-case R, which echoes the musical notation referants used in the logo.

The Guelph Chamber Choir logo was unveiled as part of an exhibition, which I also designed, at the Guelph Civic Museum.