A Brief History of WST's Logos

Sometimes it may seem that nothing about WST remains consistent from year to year, but surprisingly, the Theatre has employed only 4 major logos in its 30 plus years of existence, and only 2 of those in its first 25 years. In general, these logos have mainly appeared on the covers of WST's playbills, though occasionally they have found their way on to letterheads and various forms of merchandising memorabilia.

1965-1975

This logo was designed by (you guessed it) Jonathan Hadary, WST's first Producer/Director/Designer. The border around the logo changed from time to time (sometimes it was solid) and in later years, the "s" was often set slightly below the other letters, but in general, this was the logo Wildwood used during its first decade of existence. In case you were wondering, we were indeed a "theater" and not a "theatre" back then. The latter spelling was not employed by WST until 1974, and even then, "theater" did not entirely disappear from the scene until much later. (See below.)

1976-1990

This logo may have been designed by Joe Douglass, even though he had retired from the Theatre several years before it was actually used. At any rate, this is probably WST's most famous logo, and usually showed up at the bottom of each Wildwood program during the years indicated. As noted above, starting in 1974, WST began billing itself as a "theatre", and all title pages inside the playbills employed that spelling of the word. Nevertheless, more often than not, the exterior logo would still proudly proclaim us to be "the Wildwood Summer Theater", an amazing discrepancy lasting through 1989 that managed to flourish a full 15 years in typical Wildwood fashion.

1991-1994

This was a fairly elaborate design whose major flaw seems to be that it actually required some level of artistic ability in order to be reproduced. Developed by Charlie Morrison, it only lasted a few years, but can still be found on a variety of frisbees, water bottles, and window stickers that were produced during that period. It also provided the first indication that Wildwood recognized the existence of capital letters, as previous logos were composed exclusively of lower-case characters.

1995-Present

Wildwood's first computer-designed logo is the one currently in use. Developed by Kris Maccubbin and Alison Furlong, it has a dark, quasi-futuristic look to it and accompanied the Theatre out of the 20th Century.

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Last modified 02/19/00

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