Wagner Societies – or Wagner Verband – are a staple of the classical music tradition dating back to 19th Germany. There are over a hundred Wagner Societies in operation today, each responsible for festivals, lectures, and concert events dedicated to its eponymous composer. However, like much of classical art, Wagner Societies find themselves susceptible to graying trends; the pageantry of their programming simply does not appeal to Gen Z audiences. Wagner’s Nightmare, an art project of two young professional musicians stands to reverse this trend with its dramatic brand appeal.
Team
Scope
- Strategic Consulting
- Branding
- UI/UX Design
- Social Media
- Fundraising
Timeline
Beck & Stone understood and executed the concept brilliantly, from securing our unique print fonts to finding ways to reproduce the texture and feel of the magazine in a flawless, dynamic site.
A variety of digital and printed material was concepted for Wagner Nightmare’s launch.
The New Criterion rebrand was received positively by its current subscribers, who received complimentary access to the online archive, PDF downloads of past issues, and an iPad edition of the most recent issue. Within three months from its new launch, the website had added over 100 new digital subscribers.
Beck & Stone partner Austin Stone was onsite at The New Criterion office on launch day, coordinating with the development team and monitoring customer service channels for a smooth, issue-free transition. Because speed bumps are a part of every website transition, the launch requires close monitoring and immediate response to any problems that arise. But the careful attention and integrated project management our team put in on the front end paid off, and The New Criterion online presence was a success with its target audience. The magazine has experienced steady growth in organic and social referral traffic ever since.
Niche publishers’ concerns about committing to digital transformation strategies revolves around the return on the investment. But time and again we see subscriptions, advertising, and donations spike once that commitment is proven. Provide premium content, create a premium experience, and users will pay for premium access.
Refining Market Position
When approaching a new brand partner, we look to time-tested psychological concepts to explain the modern consumer experience. Carl Jung posited twelve archetypes that lie at the heart of man’s storytelling. Each archetype represents a metaphysical presence in the human psyche; we are physically and spiritually primed to understand them and sense them in our environment. The power of brand is a modern expression of Jung’s works: with just a small amount of art and copy, consumers can construct a backstory, attitude, POV. Consumers understand the vibe.
And simply put, the vibes for many classical art institutions are off. Consumers can’t readily identify a cohesive personality in many institutional brands, even when they honor contentious historical figures like Wagner. By reducing their communications to corporate niceties, the personality, and thus the attractiveness to consumers, disappears. When it comes to brand, playing it safe is almost always a danger.
Creating a Rockstart
Our research showed that amplifying Wagner’s Nightmare’s humor, digital-first attitude, and irreverence would force it into the whitespace that Gen Z and Millennial audiences crave. While many arts groups reflexively select the Creator, we saw that adding the Jester and the Outlaw as complementary archetypes highlight the personality missing from many similar initiatives. Together, we call this composite archetype the Rockstar.
In the words of Colombat and Orsen, the two musicians and ideators of the project, Wagner’s Nightmare is “music that Wagner would hate”. That’s the heart and soul of the project, and that’s what we have built on going into the design phase: if Wagner would hate the music, he should hate the graphic identity, too. We took inspiration from the European clubbing scene and its posters, as well as from op-art and the graphic experiments of iconic designers such as Franco Grignani, to incept the seeds of a visual language that feels psychedelic, nightmarish, appropriating Wagner’s beloved pink but plunging it in a field of black —the night, the subconscious— where it flashes as an accent color, conveying a sense of eerines and disquiet rather than the sophisticated eccentricity that it signified to Wagner. The project logo itself is rendered in a typeface that is reminescent of pixelation, or arcade video games—glitches and instability are ever present, if only subtly suggested. All these motifs are further enhanced by the propagating patterns of lines and shape, now emanating from the center, now breaking down horizontally or vertically, that have served as the initial visual centerpiece for individual applications.