Researching Orchestras' Identities

LA Phil

About

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is a lively reflection of its home city, which is recognized as one of the most vibrant and open metropolises globally. Under the guidance of Gustavo Dudamel, its Music & Artistic Director, this renowned orchestra employs the compelling potential of live music to create a sense of togetherness, cultivate intellectual and artistic development, and encourage creativity.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Logo

This orchestra's logo is simple and modern and consists of geometric typography. What mostly stands out from this logo is the letters 'LA'. Here the left side of the A was cut out at an angle and matched with the tip of the letter L's angle. This trick allows the viewer to know that that letter is an A even though 1/3 of the letter's body is missing. Both the use of geometric shapes and the play with negative space make this logo unique and recognisable. Besides the main text of the logo, this logo comes with subtext giving credits to the music and artistic director of the orchestra. This is all in a san serif typeface to keep things fresh and modern.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Colours

The orchestra's main brand colours are bright blue, white and black. These are mostly used on the orchestra's website and in some posts on social media. Then the brand's secondary colours are pastel green, purple and orange. The secondary colours are mostly used a lot on the orchestra's social media.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Social Media

On social media, a shorter version of the logo is used with just LA Phil stacked on top of each other. This helps keep the logo distinguishable in small sizes. The general content posted on social media is photographs and posts using one of the secondary colour schemes. This keeps the branding consistent and the posts playful looking. The typeface used is the same as the one used for the LA Phil short logo.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Website

The website's menu is concise with not too much information on it. Here the logo is shown in full on the left side of the menu. The website's content uses a San serif typeface similar in style to the orchestra's logo. The main colours used on the website are the brand's main colours which are blue, white and black. Regarding structure, the website has a 3-column layout. The content on the website is laid out in an interesting way with the images stacked on boxes containing their description.

Berliner Philharmoniker

About

The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra has earned a reputation for performing music from the Classical, Romantic, and early 20th centuries since the 1920s. The orchestra is a self-managed institution renowned for its broad repertoire, numerous worldwide tours, and copious recordings.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Logo

Berliner Philharmoniker's Logo is composed of a set of pentagons overlapping each other along with the orchestra's name all in black on a yellow background. the orchestra's unique pentagon shape comes from the architectural design of the orchestra's concert hall made by Hans Scharoun. This makes the logo quite unique and distinguishable from other orchestras.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Colours

The Berliner Philharmoniker main colour scheme consists of yellow, black and white as seen in its logo. Besides those colours, it also uses purple, red and cyan as secondary colours. These can be seen in use on the organisation's social media. All these colours bring out a sense of energy, creativity and optimism which make the orchestra seem bright and modern.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Social Media

The Berliner Philharmoniker's logo looks great on social media. Here they use the symbol version of their logo as the profile picture on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. This works very well as the symbol is quite unique, bright and distinctive and is seen clearer in that state rather than having the full logo. The colour yellow acts as an attention grabber and is used on important posts on their social media. The typeface used for the logo is used for headings on posters on their social media. This along with a thinner font are the typefaces used on their socials. Most of the imagery and videos used on their socials are of the orchestra performing or about their music which keeps things consistent with who they are.

Berliner Philharmoniker's Website

The orchestra's website features a gradient going from its signature yellow to white in a gradient texture on its landing page. It also has the orchestra's logo in full at the top, right above the page's menu. The website's branding is consistent with the organisation's social media branding, consisting of two main fonts to differentiate the heading from other textual content. Here only the brand's main colours are used, making their website instantly recognisable. The website's menu contains just enough sections to keep it concise and the overall structure of the website is simple and neat.

The Berliner Philharmoniker also organises a few festivals which have their own branding as seen below.

Sydney Symphony Orchestra

About

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the main orchestra in Australia, gives up to 150 performances for a combined audience of more than 350,000 people annually.

Sidney Symphony Orchestra's Logo

The orchestra's logo has two variations, one with the orchestra's full name and one with just a monogram. Both logotypes utilise the same sans serif wide font along with the same 'fading ripple' graphics for consistency. The full logo consists of the organisation's 3 words stacked on each other with the 'fading ripple' graphics on its left and right side., while the monogram consists of the letter 's' with the 'fading ripple' graphics on all its 4 sides. The monogram is a great element to this orchestra's identity as this simplified version of their logo is perfect for viewing on social media platforms.

Sidney Symphony Orchestra's Event Posters

The imagery used for the orchestra's regular events are usually shots from the orchestra's previous performances. Then for big events like 'The Music of Hans Zimmer', they use bold imagery with vivid colours and graphical patterns. This helps attract more attention to the bigger events.

Sidney Symphony Orchestra's Social Media

On social media, Sydney Symphony Orchestra uses their monogram logo as its account's display picture and then uses a shot from one of its performances as the cover image. Most of the content found on their accounts are images and videos from their events, making their simple black and white logo stand out. Their monogram logo is still recognisable even at a small size, making it highly effective. This can be seen in the logo's usage on Spotify as well as Instagram. On Spotify they display their curated playlists using striking bold imagery accompanied by their logo and the playlist's name using the same typeface used for their logo for consistency.

Sidney Symphony Orchestra's Website

The first thing that strikes the eye when going to the orchestra's website is the vibrant gradients on the page banner. The page's backgrounds are simple and neat, helping keep the focus on the content on top of it. Page sections are clean with the photos placed in a fun repetitive pattern, making them interesting. The images found on each section are generally clickable and have an attractive animation resembling the logo's 'fading ripple' graphics. The same modern sans serif typography used for the logo is used throughout the website, along with another san serif typeface to show hierarchy. Here the logo's typeface is used to show hierarchal dominance and therefore is mainly used for headings. On the other hand, the other typeface is used on less important things, which are in a smaller font size and therefore require better legibility. Black and white are used for the typography, buttons and links, to keep things minimal and clear.