The brief was to create imagery for both print and digital media advertising a University of California, Berkeley, production of “Tartuffe.” Also known as "The Impostor" or "The Hypocrite," Molière's classic play tells the story of a con man disguised as a pious spiritual leader. He uses religion to wheedle his way into the home of a gullible, affluent man.

The play's director introduced an interesting twist: she set the 17th-century comedy in modern-day Beverly Hills, while opting for a translation of the script that preserves Molière's rhyming couplets. This incongruity helped inspire the art, which includes a faint fleur-de-lis pattern and references traditionally royal colors violet and gold, but skews everything ultra vibrant. The central image is at once sinister and absurd: a disintegrating clerical collar corkscrews into a cobra, which wears oversized plastic sunglasses with a matching cross necklace. How can anyone take this con artist seriously? You'd be surprised …

The art appeared in both printed and digital formats — posters, flyers, programs, and social media-ready images — that were dispersed on the university's campus, Facebook, and beyond. The resulting suite of collateral provided a consistent, recognizable, and professional identity for the production.