GALA AT THE MUSEUM
OF MODERN ART, NYC

For 11 years I designed and art directed the Center for Reproductive Rights annual fundraising Gala. The intitial challenge each year was to establish a theme for the evening that would help donors feel good about the money they had contributed and encompass the important work the Center had acheived during the year. Another challenge was to educate the Development Program and Executive Team of the importance of a cohesive Gala brand and theme in order to create successful visuals.

The 2015 event took place at the MoMa in NYC. I proposed the theme: Raising our Voices and applied it across the venue.

A Unifying Theme

Brand Colors & Phrases

Phrases using the theme were projected on walls throughout the party, which was also cast in brand blue light. The phrases were unifying rallying cries and also reminded donors or potential donors of the essential work the Center does.

Telling their Stories

Website & Video

Always seeking to highlight the achievements of the year, the court battles won, and the women helped by the Center’s work, the theme gave voice to the plantiffs. As guests entered the building I used the screens normally displaying the exhibits to display the faces and names of the women whose cases had been defended by Center attorney’s.

Each region the Center works in was represented and the rallying cry of “we raise our voices” was used to unify donors in the common purpose of defending reproductive freedoms worldwide. The final panel was animated showing the faces, names and issues of each woman highlighted.

Celebrity Guests, Red Carpet & Photobooth

Protests & Schwag

The event drew celebrities devoted to the Center’s cause to a branded photobooth and red carpet. Celebrity collaborators and supporters like Jemima Kirk and Sarah Sophie Flicker (pictured above), Kimiko Glenn and Emma Myles (pictured below), and Darren Kriss (see below) posted images to social networks spreading the cause far and wide.
 

Invitation & Program

An ongoing challenge with the invitation was timing. It needed to be mailed earlier than the organization was ready to arrive at a theme for the event. As the designer and Creative Director of the gala, I had to be innovative in branding the invitation in a way that allowed for a theme to emerge later.

For the MoMa event, I chose a recognizable element of the building for the invitation cover, the MoMa’s signature stairway, signaling that this was a special venue. I used metalic silver  representing a more modern aesthetic.