At the end of 2021, the Board of Directors of Common Boots Theatre decided to rearticulate the company’s mandate and mission to the following:
Mandate
To collaboratively create new theatrical works that tell inclusive stories with comedy and play at the core.
Mission
Common Boots Theatre creates original and collaborative theatre for traditional and non-traditional theatrical spaces. We tell diverse and inclusive stories through comedy, physicality, and play. Our goal is to make theatre accessible for artists and audiences starting with the rehearsal and creation process through to closing night.
With a leadership change in early 2022, we decided to rebrand and to express the new direction of the company with new visual and audio logos and a new way to communicate with our audiences and stakeholders.
Working with designer Benjamin Gabbay, we created a new identity that includes a new wordmark, colour palette, and most importantly, a new accessible website (that you are on now!).
We want this new branding to be fun, inclusive, simple to understand, and to celebrate our communities and what we can create together.
Our new wordmark (visual logo) includes the words Common Boots, styled with the ‘N’ from Common connected to the ‘B’ from boots. Surrounding and intersecting this is a swirling path of different sized circles to represent the footprints made by our collective journey, that also represent the many different communities that we come from.
We also decided to make an audio ‘logo’ or ‘sting’ for audio-led projects. We commissioned 8-year old Eleanore Harding to create the music for this. She was inspired by the visible shape of the logo, and utilized computer programs to craft a sound to represent this. It is accompanied by a number of people saying the name of the company, “Common Boots Theatre.” These include the voices of Kesta Graham, our Managing Producer, Derek Kwan, our Artistic Director, as well as the cast of our first in-person show in 2022, and the audience that night.
In addition to the visual and audio logos, we have been changing the ways in which we communicate with our audiences. We want to be fun, approachable, slightly silly, straight-forward, and welcoming to everyone with which we come into contact. This includes a light-hearted, informative tone, and many, many BAD JOKES!