Abnormal Nights Comedy
Abnormal Nights is a live stand up comedy show located at the Adams Avenue Theater in San Diego’s Normal Heights neighborhood. Going on two years now, they were in need of a distinct visual identity that would separate them from the rest of the comedy scene around the city as well as solve a few challenges specific to their show.
Top priority was developing ways to promote the show without relying on announcing any specific acts. Unlike more established comedy clubs, Abnormal Nights hosts a variety of smaller local comedians that often drop in/out last second. It’s also where well-known comedians might drop in unannounced to test new material. This loose scheduling made it hard to promote any one act and often the team would use the same poster for every show.
In addition to that, the different parts of the identify also needed to be simple enough to hand off to a very small team with no designer but with enough built in complexity to create a variety of layouts and keep things interesting.
The original logo was a nod to the beloved Normal Heights sign located down the block from the theater. While celebrating the neighborhood was nice, you’ll find the sign thrown onto merchandise and sold in stores around the area and online so it didn’t make for a very ownable logo.
The team structures the show in their own specific way with intermissions to roast the audience or go over the best Venmo captions from donations from last month’s show. A logo that nods to this unconventional approach to a comedy show was vital.
The new logo uses Arpona with slight customizations to the counters of the A and O. Where you’d expect to find a triangular counter in the A and circle in the O, you instead find a circle and a square. Using this visual metaphor for not adhering to the norm, these symbols carry on throughout the identity.
