HBMR — phillip heflin

happy birthday mars rover

project overview

in a time of untold peril down here on earth, the chicago theatre scene in 2026 spent a lot of time looking up towards the stars. myself, kara toll, and sandbox theatre collective decided to hop in our rockets and launch ourselves into the unknown expanse of space as well!

happy birthday mars rover was produced in the summer of 2026, with a total of 9 performances running from june 19th through july 5th. this particular script is a delightfully morbid time, spanning all of human history from our days as cave people to our extinction. we wanted to capture the whimsical nature of this story in all of our marketing, while also invoking a sense of “purposeful scrappiness”. this tone was solidified in our first piece of marketing: our poster!

in the unfortunate age of ai, kara and I wanted to create something that was fundamentally human. as such, the key art for the poster is made out of hand cut and placed physical collage elements pulled from a myriad of different magazines and catalogues. we then scanned the piece, and added all of our copy in post. this allowed us to continue to utilize these wonderful collage elements throughout all of our marketing. the addition of a “hand drawn” aesthetic to our typography only strengthened the “made by people” energy that we wanted to achieve in our design aesthetic. these pieces all together allowed us to craft a through line through all of our marketing that felt whimsical, playful, and above all else: human!

year

my role

producer/designer

2026

client

sandbox theatre collective