Objective: fill the theater with a new audience of twenty- and thirty-somethings.

We knew that marketing the performances based on price alone would likely only motivate regular ballet goers excited by a good bargain rather than attracting a new, younger audience.

We created Art Series for NYCB to repackage the ballet-going experience to make attending a performance a priority.

NYCB still wanted to retain aspects of the Company’s rich visual heritage, which included proprietary fonts and style guides. Our main challenge and objective quickly became creating assets that would honor NYCB’s past traditions while ushering new ones.

The audience for establishment arts institutions like New York City Ballet (NYCB) is dominated by gray hair and pearls. In 2012, the average age of a NYCB ticket-buyer was 56. This creates the perception that NYCB is stuffy and elitist – even though the work presented on stage has a history of pushing the envelope and regular ticket prices start at just $29. Assuming cost to be a barrier, NYCB set aside two performances where any seat in the house cost only $29 and we were to promote these performances to attract a young adult audience.

It was a long process to get to the final design, as the illustrations and artworks are a big part of it. In order to attract a younger audience to New York City Ballet, we commissioned the urban art duo of Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, AKA FAILE, to create original works for an art exhibition. To create the artwork, we invented the artists to attend performances and also pour over the company's imagery archives, to be inspired by its heritage.

Following a limited single-ticket pre-sale for Faile fans, the first NYCB Art Series performance sold out in 7 minutes.

Through Art Series, the average age of NYCB ticket-buyers dropped from 56 to 31 and 87% of the audience at Art Series was a first time NYCB ticket holder.

Art Series gave NYCB exposure beyond New York’s establishment arts and events publications (The New York Times, The New Yorker and New York Magazine) with coverage on websites like PSFK, Arrested Motion, Complex and Brooklyn Street Art.