Visual Learning: Poster for ‘Lend Me a Tenor’ on Broadway

By ERIK PIEPENBURG, New York TimesWhen the Quaker Oats company decided its namesake logo – the behatted fellow who has been the face of its oat products since 1877 – was too heavy and pasty-faced for today’s health-conscious consumer, the company hired the illustrator Robert Rodriguez to give their man a makeover.“They said, ‘Take our quaker and make him go out in the sun for a day,’ so that’s what I did,” Mr. Rodriguez said during a phone interview.The 62-year-old designer now brings his eye for reinvention to Broadway with his poster design for the coming revival of Ken Ludwig’s “Lend Me a Tenor.” The slamming-doors-and-mistaken-identity comedy, set at a hotel in 1934, stars Anthony LaPaglia, Tony Shalhoub, Jan Maxwell and Justin Bartha, with the actor Stanley Tucci making his Broadway debut as a director.Mr. Rodriguez, who lives in Los Angeles, said the poster, like much of his work, was inspired by the design aesthetics of the 1930s and 1940s, from the geometric patterns and fonts of Art Deco to the Hollywood photography of George Hurrell and the movies of the period.“Since the play takes place exclusively in hotel rooms, I also looked at old hotel postcards,” he said. “I took the roof off the hotel and had the people showing through.”The actors were photographed in a studio, and Mr. Rodriguez then illustrated their faces and poses to come up with a poster that resembles a richly colored Norman Rockwell scene gone haywire.“The advertising agency was going for an idea of a lot of action happening, kind of like the movie ‘You Can’t Take It With You,’” he said.In addition to the Quaker Oats man, Mr. Rodriguez has designed pin-ups; poster art for the movies “The Two Jakes,” “City Slickers 2″ and “Jewel of the Nile” (“I’m the king of the sequels,” he said); packaging for Barilla pasta; and stamps for the United States Postal Service. A portfolio of his work is here.Mr. Rodriguez lamented the slow death of illustrated movie posters, something he attributes to Hollywood’s cult of celebrity.“They just don’t use illustrations anymore,” he said. “There’s a formula to movie poster art usually, and they’ve decided it’s better with photography. I’m sure the actors probably like it.”“Lend Me a Tenor” starts previews at the Music Box Theater on March 11.