Royal Ballet and Opera

Background

The Royal Opera House is home to two world-class Companies: The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera. From the start of the 2024/25 Season, this cultural institution has entered a new era as the Royal Ballet and Opera (RBO), uniting its world-class Companies under a clearer, more inclusive name.

To support this transformation, we worked in close partnership with RBO’s Creative Studio to develop a set of brand principles and a flexible design toolkit. This system was designed to empower RBO’s teams to implement and evolve the brand both internally and externally, ensuring consistency while allowing creative expression.

By combining DesignStudio’s brand expertise with RBO’s deep knowledge of its industry, productions and audiences, together we created a brand that elevates and celebrates all the art forms and people RBO represents. The result ensures RBO is recognised as a unified cultural powerhouse, welcoming new and existing audiences to its diverse programme of productions.

Immersion

To fully appreciate the breadth of RBO’s offerings, we attended performances—from Das Rheingold to Don Quixote—and spoke to the creative forces behind them. We engaged with superfans and sceptics, explored the venue behind the scenes, and immersed ourselves in the rich history and future ambitions of this icon of the performing arts.

Creative Concept

At the heart of the brand is the idea of a Living Timeline which honours RBO’s illustrious history, while connecting it to the present and future. Through close collaboration, we ensured that every element was inspired by RBO’s heritage, current programming and vision for what comes next.

This central idea is expressed through three key design principles: Reveal, Reconnect and Reimagine. These principles guide the entire brand system, celebrating the richness of all RBO’s art forms and providing a foundation that their teams can build upon to create a consistent yet adaptable brand expression.

Marque

Drawing from the archives, we discovered the organisation’s longest-standing marque and used it as a foundation, adding character, confidence and orchestration to capture the art forms coming together harmoniously with both structure and flow.

Brand Expression

Much like the marque, the rest of the brand takes inspiration from the organisation’s past, present and future. The colour palette builds on their signature red, complemented by an extended palette drawn from their archive, celebrating the breadth of their creative expression and allowing flexibility across different contexts and tones.

To celebrate the extraordinary variety of productions and expertise within the organisation, we introduced two typefaces: a modern serif and strong grotesque. These nod to their heritage, whilst capturing the flair and emotional power of their work.

Tone of voice played a huge role in shaping the brand expression and capturing the vision we set out to create. We distilled the essence of our creative idea into three principles - Sharp, Evocative, Unexpected - to infuse the verbal identity with the powerful storytelling central to all their art forms. These principles characterised our tone in simple, definable terms which we applied across a messaging framework for the entire organisation. Together, they create an inclusive and flexible verbal identity that excites and engages audiences across all content and channels.

When showcasing the art forms through imagery, we developed a system to ensure the stories reveal details, reconnect people and stories, and reimagine art forms throughout the organisation. But to address situations where imagery wouldn’t be available, we also created a texture treatment to allow for expressive and abstract solutions. This treatment uses production elements and visual metaphors to effectively represent the content.

The brand comes together with a layout system that creates space to showcase the past, present and future, along with all the art forms and the people involved in their creation. This system uses directional layering which evokes a sense of momentum and a drive to look to the future.

Launch

The brand is currently being rolled out throughout the 24/25 Season by the Royal Ballet and Opera Creative Studios. It has been fantastic to see the team bring the new brand to life with each 
new production and communication. The result is a brand that commands attention, reflects the scale of RBO’s impact and 
ensures its presence is felt across both physical and digital stages.

"It’s been a joy to see how DesignStudio together with our internal team has built a new brand identity clearly expressing the full story of who we are. This will support us to engage audiences that haven’t discovered us yet as well as reengaging with our current audience and stakeholders."

Christina Østerby
Royal Ballet and Opera Director of Customer and Innovation