Orchestra of St. Luke’s

Brand refresh and new website for a world-class NYC orchestra

A 360-degree brand and website that finally matched the caliber of one of NYC’s most celebrated orchestras

Project Overview

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) is one of New York City’s most celebrated chamber orchestras — a 50-year-old institution with four Grammy Awards, a longstanding artistic home at Carnegie Hall, and its own purpose-built rehearsal, recording, and performance facility, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Hudson Yards. OSL is known for world-class performances, a citywide community engagement program, and education programming that reaches thousands of New York City public school students every year.In 2019, OSL was at an inflection point. After two years of 20% ticket sales growth, a new Director of Marketing in place, and the arrival of internationally celebrated principal conductor Bernard Labadie that fall, the organization had real momentum — and a brand that hadn’t kept up. They came to us for a brand refresh, season brochure, and new website to match where the orchestra was actually headed.

360-Degree Branding, Arts & Culture, Brand Rollout & Marketing Activation, Purpose-Driven & Sustainable Businesses, UX Strategy, Web Design & Development

oslmusic.org

2019

Brochure Design
Brand Refresh
Brand Identity
Event Collateral
Web Design
Development

The Challenge

After decades of managing marketing and design with limited internal resources, OSL needed outside help to make the leap into their new brand. The website wasn’t built to handle the full complexity of a performing arts institution: ticketing, program information, education, community outreach, and donations all needed to work together in a way audiences could navigate without friction. With Bernard Labadie arriving as principal conductor, ticket sales accelerating, and the orchestra’s 50th anniversary on the horizon, the timing was right to invest in a brand built for the next era.

The Goal: Communicate modernity, accessibility, and vitality — signaling OSL’s evolution to younger and broader audiences — while feeling like a natural progression for a 44-year-old institution, not a total overhaul.

Our Approach

We assembled a multidisciplinary team — brand designers, print specialists, and web designers with specific experience in performing arts organizations — and ran brand refresh, season brochure, and website as a single cohesive project. Every touchpoint had to feel like it came from the same place.

OSL needed a brand that brought its history into focus. The refreshed identity carries the institutional gravity of a Grammy-winning orchestra while making room for a new generation of audiences and artists.

A new typographic system anchored the work, giving OSL a visual voice that communicates both accessibility and artistic seriousness. Color, layout, and editorial systems were built to flex across performance promotion, education content, fundraising materials, and the kind of long-form editorial storytelling that sets a serious arts organization apart.

What We Built

The brand refresh. A complete identity system — typography, color, layout, editorial standards — designed to scale across performance, education, community, and development.

The 2018–19 season brochure. A 40+ page publication bringing together concert listings, artist profiles, education programs, and DiMenna Center information in a visual language that reflected both the caliber of the ensemble and the community-forward spirit of its mission. The first major deliverable in the new identity, and the proof of concept for everything that followed.

The new website at oslmusic.org. Built on WordPress and architected to handle the full complexity of a performing arts organization — performances, programs, education, community outreach, and ticketing — giving OSL’s team and its audiences an intuitive experience for the first time.

The 2019 Gift of Music Gala. With the new identity standards in place, we designed an event campaign that promoted OSL’s signature annual fundraiser while reinforcing the broader brand. Hosted at The Plaza and attended by Mikhail Baryshnikov and David Hyde Pierce, the event suite included save the dates, foil-stamped invitations, reply cards, envelopes, and event programs — delicate florals paired with bold contrasting colors, a confident and modern signature for one of NYC’s most storied galas.

The brochures look AMAZING… communicating modernity, accessibility, and vitality while feeling like an organic evolution for our 44-year-old classical music brand. This new level of design sophistication puts us on much stronger footing in a competitive NYC arts environment.

Steven Litner, Director of Marketing

The Impact

The brand refresh launched in 2019, just as Bernard Labadie’s first season as principal conductor began. In the years since, the orchestra has continued to build on that momentum — and the brand has held up through every chapter of it.

Since the 2019 launch, OSL has:

Celebrated its 50th anniversary season in 2024–25 with 13 performances at Carnegie Hall, including a series in each of Carnegie’s three venues
Grown its body of commissioned work from 50+ new pieces (2019) to 75+ today
Grown its premieres from 175+ to 200+ world, U.S., and New York City premieres
Launched the DeGaetano Composition Institute (2019), an annual program supporting emerging composers that has become a signature of the orchestra’s contemporary work
Launched Visionary Sounds (2022), an interdisciplinary new music series at The DiMenna Center spotlighting 20th- and 21st-century artists
Earned ongoing critical recognition from The New York Times for its 50th anniversary programming
Maintained its position as the orchestra that has performed at Carnegie Hall more than any other since its 1983 debut there

The brand we built in 2019 has carried OSL through Bernard Labadie’s tenure, the pandemic, the orchestra’s 50th anniversary milestone, and now its transition to the next chapter — a system designed for evolution doing exactly what it was built to do.

Ready to dive in?

Whether you’re launching something new, refreshing an existing brand, or bringing more consistency to your story—we’ll help you do it right from the start.

We’re not just here for deliverables. We’re here for the long haul.