Disney’s Beauty and the Beast musical (2021–)

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast stage musical was adapted from Walt Disney Pictures’ Academy Award-winning 1991 animated film. The show first opened in 1993 and has since toured the world, from Broadway to the West End.

Ann Hould-Ward won a Tony Award for her design work on the costumes which, together with the set, lean more heavily on the Rococo art movement than the animated film.

In 2021, for the show’s third UK tour, all graphics for the musical were updated. Span was chosen for the underlying structure of the main title lettering, and for the show’s headlines and promotional material.

While Span wasn’t produced with the Rococo style in mind, it was designed to compliment organic forms, graceful curves and floral ornamentation, all features of the Rococo movement.

Disney’s designers embraced Span’s mid-caps weight (sometimes referred to as ‘petite caps’) for its title settings. The height of these uppercase letters is midway between the capitals and lowercase. Though not common, mid caps were included in the font by Jamie Clarke, to provide a wider range of title setting options.

Designers can choose to set titles in:

— All capitals
— Capitals with mid caps
— Capitals with small caps
— Capitals with lowercase

The updated graphics have so far been used for Beauty and the Beast’s 2021 UK tour, 2022 West End revival, and the 2023 Australia revival tours.