Hart House has always been one of the many institutions on campus that can seem mysterious. In first year, I remember seeing the posters for The Great American Trailer Park Musical all over campus and thinking to myself, “that’s an interesting poster.” It has been three years and I still can’t help but stop and admire the posters. I recently got in touch with Sara Herron, Hart House’s current senior graphic designer and digital media specialist. For the past five years, Herron has been working closely with the Hart House team during the year to create the promotional materials for the Theatre, along with other projects under the Hart House umbrella.
SHAFAK KHANANI/THE VARSITY
The Varsity: You’ve been creating work for Hart House for five years now, how has the design process changed over the years?
Sara Herron: [Hart House] and I work together for a few months, starting in April until the end of August. That’s when we develop the whole look for the season so that we’re ready to roll by September. But it hasn’t always been like that. The first year, I started in the month of August so everything was already done, but it was chaos. After the chaos of that year, we started to get a good system going. We wanted to present all of Hart House’s productions as a season. Before, they would do design work for one show… and then another. What I wanted to do was create a package because then you can sell that. Any other major theatre in the city would do the same. So we were trying to get on that track.
TV: Since you work very closely with the rest of Hart House, do you have full creative control over the design materials or is it more of a collaborative process?
SH: Initially, there was a lot of back and forth because it was a lot of figuring out what would work. It’s definitely very collaborative in a sense that I’m supposed to be creating what they need me to represent in order to sell the show. We’ve had such success over the past three to four years and now it’s like, “Go off! Be creative,” but I still have to make sure they’re very involved.
TV: When you’re designing the promotional materials, what do you hope to achieve besides, of course, getting people to go to the plays?
SH: Traditional theatre advertisements consist of production stills. You know, the images of the actors that are in the show. It’s not necessarily — for someone who’s not into theatre — the most interesting stuff. It’s not something that you look at and go, “I really want to go to that.” What I want to do is take it away from being literal, and more so, create a mood. I want to do something a little more creative, so people will go, “Oh that’s interesting! What’s that about?” I don’t want to create a theatre poster. I want to create something that someone will want to rip down from a pole and put up in his or her bedroom. That is what’s interesting. That’s what’s going to get people to go to the shows.
