The Toneelschuur (“Theatre Shed”) is a renowned institution in the Dutch theater world: a theater and cinema house along with their own production house. Toneelschuur have been presenting progressive, innovative, and adventurous theater, dance, and film performances for over 45 years. Since 20 years their home base is a building co-designed by Mecanoo and artist/designer Joost Swarte, who also created their logo. Recently, Toneelschuur have embarked on a transition to better connect with a younger and more diverse audience.

Adopting the shorter name “Schuur”, the new visual identity reflects this change in direction. A new identity without losing sight of the rich history. To maintain the connection with the past and with Joost Swarte, the existing logo was applied in a simplified form. By stretching the logo in various ways, Schuur is visually represented as a versatile provider of a broad program.

This logo was the foundation for Schuur, a custom typeface that extends its atmosphere in a contemporary way throughout the identity. A set of drawings by Joost Swarte was digitised and served as a basis for a typeface family with extended language support, fit for use on screen and in print. Converting the logo’s versatile stretching as a variable axis, selected glyphs can be transformed, allowing flexible typography that mirrors the identity. For editorial use the typeface was expanded with a weight axis.

To illustrate the growing interconnectedness of Schuur’s offerings, images of performances that visually relate to each other were used to create compositions. This results in an eclectic and dynamic visual language that conveys what Schuur stands for: a place where creators and enthusiasts of theater, film, dance, music, and poetry come together and are pleasantly surprised.

Based on this identity, various materials were developed that further embrace the new direction. A website that provides room for depth and cross-references, a magazine that offers more context to the program, and materials such as folders, flyers, videos, and campaigns that showcase the breadth of Schuur and give the stage a modern, youthful, and innovative appearance.

A series of promotional cards, each displaying one character of Schuur’s new typeface

A few of Joost Swarte’s initial drawings for the Schuur typeface family.