Miami City Ballet

✦ Overview
Miami City Ballet had a respected artistic legacy and a distinctly Miami point of view. My role was to help extend that identity across the many ways audiences experienced the organization, from performance campaigns and education to special events and donor engagement. Working alongside the internal marketing team and external agency partners, I helped create a more cohesive expression of the brand without losing the movement, personality, and sophistication that made it recognizable.

✦ Skills
Art Direction, Brand Systems, Integrated Campaigns

✦ Key Partners
Marketing, External Agency Partners + Artistic Leadership

✦ Industry
Nonprofit Performing Arts and Education

Challenge

  • A respected artistic institution needed to connect with broader, more contemporary audiences without losing the credibility of its classical foundation.

  • The brand had to support distinct parts of the organization—including the professional company, school, special events, and donor engagement—while still feeling like one company.

  • Each performance required its own visual story, creating a need for flexibility without sacrificing consistency or brand recognition.

Focus

  • Translate and extend the agency-led brand direction into a flexible system that could work across performances, education, events, and donor communications.

  • Balance the discipline and beauty of ballet with the warmth, movement, and cultural energy of Miami.

  • Create greater consistency across print, digital, and live experiences while leaving room for individual productions and collaborations to have their own expression.

A new visual language for ballet

  • Built a flexible visual system that balanced ballet’s heritage with a more contemporary, expressive point of view. A consistent core identity created cohesion across the company while allowing individual performances and programs to flex.

  • Shifted the language away from formality and distance toward connection, participation, and cultural relevance. The goal was to make ballet feel more immediate to new audiences without losing credibility with existing ones.

  • Brought the system to life through restrained typography, expressive photography, and performance-specific color worlds inspired by Miami’s light, movement, and energy.

Giving every performance its own visual world

Each production drew from the visual language of its choreography, costumes, history, and mood. Classical references were paired with contemporary typography, imagery, and color to create campaigns that felt distinct to the work while remaining connected to Miami City Ballet.

Where ballet met contemporary culture

For the world premiere of Heatscape and Miami City Ballet’s 30th anniversary gala, the organization partnered with Shepard Fairey on a limited-edition invitation suite that brought ballet into conversation with street art and contemporary culture. I helped translate that collaboration across the event experience and supporting communications.

Opening the door to
a new generation

Education materials used a warmer, more approachable visual language to invite students and families into ballet without diminishing the sophistication of the larger brand. Illustration, editorial design, and student-focused photography worked together to create a distinct expression for younger audiences while keeping the connection to Miami City Ballet clear.

Making support feel like belonging

For Miami City Ballet’s 30th anniversary, the 30 Thirty Club created an elevated experience for top supporters through exclusive access, behind-the-scenes moments, and insider communications. The identity and collateral needed to feel premium and intimate while still belonging unmistakably to the larger organization.

Miami City Ballet Logo

Miami City Ballet showed me how much range a strong brand can hold. The same identity had to feel credible on stage, inviting to a child seeing ballet for the first time, contemporary enough to sit alongside Shepard Fairey, and meaningful to the patrons supporting the organization behind the scenes. The work was strongest when those very different experiences still felt like they belonged to the same company.

“I was consistently blown away by Stephanie’s creativity and innovation.

She was always thoughtful, collaborative, and detailed in the design process, and delivered a brilliant finished product - on time, every time.”

— Estefania Garcia, Senior Coordinator, Marketing and PR, Miami City Ballet

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