“How to Succeed” (H2S) undoubtedly became my favorite collection of marketing materials for a show. The poster was inspired by the image of Darren Criss as Finch when H2S was on Broadway. With all of the holidays and events that were happening during the timespan of production, I had the idea to create a ‘holiday’ series of Finch in celebration of each of day to post on social media as a semester-long promotion for the show. The jacket and tie colors were coordinated to the holiday, and accompanied by a festive lapel pin. In total I created 10 versions of Finch to celebrate events from Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day, to Opening Night and Graduation Day. In conjunction with the posters, I created a series of “Meet the Actors” posts showcasing each of the student actors in the show.

During production, the Artistic Director came to me with the idea of making H2S show shirts. I decided to turn the bow into an icon of the show and use it as an accessory to be “worn” when you put the shirt on. The back is a guide of sorts on ‘how to succeed’ in various things as stated by lines in the show.

Props for the Show

One unique aspect of this production was that I ended up creating a handful of props for the show itself. Most notably is the pocket-sized “How to Succeed” book (and back-ups). Since Finch always had his book at hand, I took measurements of the actor’s jacket and then hand-crafted a book for him that would easily slip in and out of his pockets. On a larger scale, I created a full series of corresponding slides for Finch to do his ‘presentation’ in the board room, including an over-sized copy of a faux TIME magazine cover with our own J.B. Biggley.

Images below show the props in their final form as well as live in the show.