Case Study — Theatre — Poster & Campaign Design — Kenya

Elements

Role

Poster & Campaign Design

Focus

Key Art, Poster System & Print

Period

2024

Sector

Theatre & Arts

Overview

Elements is a play by John Sibi-Okumu — one of Kenya’s most respected playwrights, actors and broadcasters. It follows a girl of mixed heritage, born to immigrant parents who are themselves of mixed heritage, as she wrestles an identity crisis and everything it sets in motion.

Presented by Beyond The Mainstream Storytellers (BTM) and directed by Wakio Mzenge, the production ran at the Kenya National Theatre in October 2024. I created the key art and the promotional campaign that carried it — the single image a play about fractured identity needed to announce itself.

The Brief

Give a serious, literary play a poster that stops people — and says, in one look, what the show is about. It had to honour the weight of a Sibi-Okumu premiere while feeling contemporary enough to travel on a phone screen.

Above all, it had to hold a hard idea gracefully: who am I when I’m made of many places at once?

The Concept

One profile, many faces. The key art builds a single woman’s side profile out of a montage of other faces — different heritages, generations, and skin tones layered into one flowing silhouette. Look once and it’s a portrait; look again and it’s a crowd. That’s the play: an identity assembled from many elements, and the struggle to make them one.

Set against a soft, neutral ground with the title carved in bold, the image gives John Sibi-Okumu’s name and Wakio Mzenge’s direction room to sit with authority.

The Campaign

The key art anchored a full rollout — the reveal, the cast announcement, a set of poster layouts, and print advertising — every piece drawn from the same visual world so the run read as one confident campaign.

Elements poster — script title treatment
Title Treatment
Elements cast poster — Helen Keli
Cast Announcement
Elements key art reveal
Key Art — Reveal

Outcome

  • A single, memorable key image that tells the whole story of the play in one look
  • A complete poster system — teaser, reveal, and cast announcement, all on one visual world
  • Print and social rollout — press-ready advertisements and a shareable RSVP graphic
  • Campaign worthy of the work — key art with the gravity a John Sibi-Okumu premiere deserves

If this is you

If one image has to sell your show and stop people mid-scroll, I build you key art they can't walk past. One look, the whole story.

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