The Addams Family
The Musical
Theatre poster design and brand identity for The Addams Family Musical.
The typical tropes of this well-known story are present; bats, the castle, gravestones (with a playful zombie hand even breaking through the surface for particularly eagle-eyed viewers, a nod to the dark humour of the original show) however a colour pallet of blues, purples and pinks breathes life into the Gothic genre. The typography is also modern in style whilst feeling aptly cabalistic.
The graphic style is rugged, offset and scratchy. Like a bad montage or rough screenprint. This is uncomfortable yet interesting viewing. It’s slightly off, creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky...
When sketching up initial concepts, I wanted the poster to be minimal in content and style, but use the image and text elements to create leading lines, directing the viewers’ gaze.
These ideas play around with scale and balance within the space, and were developed into the drafts shown below.
From this starting point, in conversation with the Drama department, we proceeded with the first option, using the mansion as the visual anchor. Whilst the atmosphere of the dominating moon was liked, with the full text added in the effect was lost. Moving the mansion to the top quarter gave ample space for the necessary information, and nicely playing on the feeling of being buried under the ground.
-
![]()
Direction A: Super Moon
-
![]()
Direction B: Thing
-
![]()
Direction C: Typographic Gothic
Separations
I wanted to create a vintage look, full of texture and imperfections. To achieve this I broke the artwork down into colour layers, as would be done to prepare an artwork for screen printing. Each layer was then subject to a process of rasterizing, applying textures, and outlining again to vectorise the artwork.
Going social
The final design was used across our exterior advertising spaces, performance collateral (below), and on social media. To further engage with audiences on social media we adapted the design for animation, for use on story and video platforms.
Family portaits were displayed throughout the theatre. The photographic treatment feels old-wordly, but adhears to the colour pallet. This was also carried across the photographic frames and set dressing; charity shop frames were sprayed and then destressed using pastels and a process of chipping away the paint to reveal original details. The result is a branver, bolder evocation of the gothic genre.