My daughter is in her high school’s theatre program. Often, when she is cast in a school play or
musical, I am approached to design the poster, programs, and cast t-shirts for the show. The
first time I was given this task was for the 2016 production of You Can’t Take it With You by
George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, about an eccentric family named the Sycamores who
refuse to sacrifice their dreams to get ahead in life.
The show’s director and I had a lot of back and forth over how to design the poster. The
original idea was to squeeze the Sycamores’ Victorian home between two apartment buildings,
to show how they stay the same among a changing world. Unfortunately, the title of the play
takes up a lot of space, so the apartment buildings had to go.
In the end, the title became part of the Victorian home, comically rendered to make parts of the
house form the letters. (For example, a round window became the O in “You.”) Then—partly to
make the poster easier to read, partly to catch the eye of the public, and partly because bright
colors just scream “Sycamore Clan”—the letters in the title were filled with solid colors in
contrast to the black outlines and white background. As a finishing touch, I added little details
that represented the different hobbies of the family members, such as fireworks (which Mr.
Sycamore makes and sells) shooting out of the chimney. I also included Grandpa Sycamore’s
pet snakes, and made sure to make them look as cute as possible.
The design was altered accordingly before being copied to make the shirts and programs. As
my daughter tells me, the shirts proved to be very popular with the students; some kids even
worked their show t-shirts into their regular school wardrobes. Needless to say, designing for
You Can’t Take it With You began a regular gig volunteering for my daughter’s productions.
