About a year before joining the DTSL team and graduating from NYU, I attended the show’s worldwide premiere at a small blackbox theater near campus. Despite the scale, I found myself fully immersed in a narrative that was equally existential and escapist in nature. Seeing that kind of potential, I walked out of the theatre knowing I wanted to do growth marketing for DTSL. 

Having recently come on as the graphics and marketing manager for the show’s next iteration at HERE Arts Center, I expressed my intention to nurture and amplify DTSL’s ethos of radically inclusive magical realism during my initial consultations with the producers. Using their artistic and commercial references—which included Eyvind Earle’s illustrative style, shadow puppetry from Lottie Reininger and Michel Ocelot, and lastly, celebrity references to Caroline Polachek and Vin Diesel for comedic relatability—I began to infuse a poignant sense of dramatic irony and humor in the public facing visual identity of this project. This was especially due to my understanding that comedic relief is a crucial tactic the show uses to maintain high spirits while confronting a variety of thematically grim topics.

My design and branding work for DTSL aspires to strike the balance between sterility and campiness, as my central objective is to reinforce the main character’s experience of being a naively jubilant teen girl that lives in her characteristically adolescent daydreams to cope with the unfavorable reality of being chronically ill during your most formative years.