Building a Campaign Around Wonder
Alliance Theatre
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Alliance Theatre •
The Alliance Theatre partnered with me to develop the visual identity and campaign system for the Imagine Endowment, a major fundraising initiative designed to expand access to youth programming and double its long-term impact.
The goal was to create a compelling campaign that would resonate with both individual and institutional donors— balancing emotional storytelling with measurable outcomes tied to mental health, education and community impact.
The Challenge
This wasn’t just a branding exercise, it was a positioning challenge.
Donors already valued the arts, many viewed it as a “nice-to-have” rather than a critical investment. The campaign needed to reframe theatre as an essential driver of:
Mental health outcomes
Academic performance
Long-term societal impact
At the same time, the creative needed to:
Avoid overused theatre tropes (masks, curtains)
Feel sophisticated yet accessible
Differentiate from concurrent capital campaigns
Inspire urgency, responsibility, and optimism
Services
Creative & design strategy
Visual identity system
Logo design
Illustration
Printed marketing materials
Campaign style guide
Team credits:
Brand Strategy: Ashley Sheppard, emdashery
Strategic Foundation
The core a driving the work:
Access to theatre doesn’t just create moments of joy, it creates measurable, lasting change in how young people think, feel, and perform.
From this, the campaign needed to communicate:
Wonder as the entry point
Impact as the outcome
Investment as the bridge
This balance of emotion + evidence became the foundation for all creative exploration.
THE BIG IDEAWelcome to Wonder
This concept reframed the campaign as an open invitation:
Welcome to the performance, to the experience, and to the impact.
It allowed the campaign to lead with emotion (wonder), support with outcomes (resilience, achievement), and drive action (investment in access).
Bright, expressive color palette to evoke energy and youth paired with hand-drawn and illustrative elements to reinforce imagination
Photography that captures authentic emotional reactions and layered compositions that reflect transformation and movement
“Lisa’s design ultimately makes our donors feel the way we want them to— full of hope, child-like curiosity, and desire to participate in a communal initiative. This is thanks to Lisa's precision with the interplay of all design elements, including a tactile design that makes our materials memorable in a competitive fundraising environment.”
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Trent Anderson, Director of Development
Alliance Theatre