Theatre Artists Fund

Written By Duncan Sweetland

When Covid-19 shut down the Theatre Industry Sir Sam Mendes called on the government for assistance to support theatre workers, when none came, Netflix stepped in with £500,000 to seed fund a new charity. Sir Sam partnered with Society of London Theatre & UK Theatre to fully deliver the charity within 3 weeks of conception.

My focus on this project was to brand, design and project manage the website and working closely with the overall project manager to identify a platform to source public donations.

Choosing a domain:

Due to the fluid nature of the project time was of the essence the first order of business was to name the new charity.

Various versions of the ‘Theatre Artists Support Fund’ were pitched. However during my initial research I noticed the .fund TLD could be very well positioned to:

  • Denote that this was a fund/dispresement

  • Provide us with a short, modern and pithy URL (TheatreArtists.Fund)

  • Allow the URL to be as short and user friendly as possible.

I pitched this to our CEO along with an early variant of the lockup above as the next meeting was only hours away.

Creating the lockup:

With time precious we worked on developing the brand further, this was an excercise in linear decision making.

The logo lock up needed to have the following attributes

  • Powerful, simple & recognisable

  • Aligned to the SOLT/UKT house style

  • Work both on its own and with a potentially ever expanding array of sponsors

  • Work equally powerfully in colour and black and white

  • Be able to be broken down into sub components

  • Be clear and legible at any size

  • Be punchy to maximise on social media visibility

SOLT/UK Theatre’s house style uses Futura PT and Open Sans as it’s headline and body fonts respectively. Taking the simplicity 1980’s political T-shirts as inspiration the Theatre Artists Fund logo was created in about 1 hour.

Designing the website:

As a focal point of the campaing we needed a website capable of:

  • For recipents it needed to:

    • Explain the premise of the charity to potential recipients.

    • Identify which Theatre workers would be eligible to receive the funds and the decision making process behind who would receive them.

    • Provide a mechanism to apply for funds.

    • To refer people in need to other charities is they were ineligible for help through our charity.

  • For donors the site needed to:

    • Explain how to make a large volume private donation either publically or anonymously.

    • Name check donor organisations & celebrities to create a groundswell of donor support.

    • Have a mechanism to facilate public donations both on a one off and repeat basis.

    • Provide social proof of both donor and recipent action.

However this would need to be part of phased roll out, as the initial action as the first thing was to ship a holding site to ensure awareness.

To do this I put together both a sitemap and Wireframe document using Lucidchart that I could share with our inhouse developer who would handle the site build.

Site structure:

I was keen to ensure the site had as few pages as possible to ensure a simple UX and for maximum legibility.

Guiding principles were:

  • Summary information should be available for each key action on the homepage

    • What is the Fund about?

    • Who is the Fund for?

    • How do I access the Fund?

    • If I can’t access the Fund what else can I do?

    • How can I support the Fund?

  • There should be no more than one sub-page per section providing detailed content.

  • Any subsequent click should be a link out to a resource.

  • The site should be linear and easily navigable on mobile.

Duncan Sweetland
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