MV80 Design: Vitto Parri on Capturing 80 Years of Mountview

13 Apr 26

As we launch a limited edition MV80 merchandise range, MA Creative Producing graduate Vitto Parri (winner of the student competition to create the anniversary design) shares the creative thinking behind his work, reflecting on how he approached translating nearly eight decades of the school’s history, identity and artistic spirit into a single visual concept.

“When I received the offer to do the design for the celebration of the 80th anniversary of Mountview, my first thought went to how I could capture the different masks that this school has worn throughout its history, and how I could represent all the different stepstones that characterised the school for almost a century: ever changing and yet staying loyal to its very essence.

Picture 1: The Symbol

My first step into creating this design took place in a small room on the second floor of the new building in Peckham, and it involved an intense research into an archive made of posters, pictures, letters, and programmes from eight decades of Mountview’s history. Each of these elements represented thousands of students and people who, over the years, have recognised Mountview not only as a place where they can study and grow, but an opportunity where their dreams and aspirations could become a reality in the UK theatre industry and worldwide.

I quite suddenly realised that Mountview is more than a singular element standing in the middle of the theatre industry – it is a collection of small details, disjointed elements, and realities that, like a puzzle, are in harmonic communication with each other, offering to the outside a complete and uniformed picture.

For this reason, when approaching the design, I decided to extrapolate small details scattered within the archival history of the school, disjoining them from their natural habitat and one by one put them back together. My intention was to create something that could offer different layers of reading and still harmonise together like a good piece of music would do.

Picture 2: Programme pattern

The first element that I found interesting was what is recorded in the archive as ‘the symbol’ (Pic 1). This appeared regularly on Mountview’s programmes and posters for forty years, from the very early days and up until the 1980s. In its complexity of curves, lines and images, I found the frame in which to insert and build a design that could look at the future, not forgetting the heritage and the past from which this institution comes from.

A second element that I found fascinating was the small graphic signs and symbols that old designers would use to make the posters and the programmes more alive. In those types of small signs (often hand drawn) I could decipher all the passion that people had put in to make sure that everything at Mountview would be focused in the creation and delivery of a show, a production or simply the material that would represent the elegance and the status of the school. Those little signs can often be found in Mountview’s old material as separations between sections or lines, offering a chance to make very graphically dull texts into a moving experience for the reader’s eyes. To utilise this, I have extrapolated one of them (the one that appeared to me as the liveliest – Pic 2) and reproduced it in a pattern sequence at the top of the design, to offer an element of movement.

The top centre of the piece is the container for the 80th anniversary logo, surrounded by the different locations that the school has had throughout the years.

Lastly, I filled the design with the hand drawing of the new Peckham building. This last piece had the most personal significance for me – not only is this the image that every Mountview Peckham student has imprinted in their eyes since the first day they set foot into the school, but also because it represents every dream and aspiration that Mountview has given (and keeps giving) to students from all over the world: a dream of creativity and freedom.”

Find the Limited Edition MV80 hoodie and t-shirt in our shop.

Final design

T-shirt with the design