Playbill is celebrating our 140th birthday this October, marking a major anniversary of our founding in 1884. But our celebration isn't just internal. We're getting theatre fans in on the fun with a series of collectible, retro Playbill covers across all Broadway shows throughout the month. Theatregoers are currently getting, at random, one of four different Playbill covers when they arrive at the theatre, each imagining what the show's Playbill might have looked like in four different eras of Playbill cover design. Click here to see all the different possible covers.

The idea for this Legacy project began with our Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Alex Birsh in 2023—it takes a long time to plan a major project like this! "We researched and sampled many, many Playbill covers from the 1930s through the 2000s," shares Playbill's Creative Services Director Dean Greer, who was instrumental in the design process of the Legacy covers. "Some of the earliest Playbill covers are beautiful on their own, but not adaptable to today's modern productions. The four 'inspiration covers' that we chose met three requirements: they represented the visual style of their respective periods, they each incorporated a different version of the Playbill logos that have been in use over the past century, and they worked as templates which could be customized and adapted to each current production."

The shows' covers were all designed by their respective ad agencies using specifications and models that we provided. Creating those models involved adapting discontinued sizes to the modern specifications, and painstakingly re-drawing all logos and design elements for the digital requirements of today.

Read on for the full story of how our iconic Playbill cover designs have evolved over the years, enough to be all but unrecognizable for our first six decades! You'll also get some behind-the-scenes intel on how we were able to bring back some classic designs from our archives for the Broadway plays and musicals of today.

Let's look back at how Playbills have looked over our 140 years, beginning even before they were called "Playbill!"

1884 to the Mid '30s: Pre-Playbill

Though many of Broadway’s Playbills were published by the company that would later become the modern day Playbill, Inc., the Playbill name didn’t exist until the 1930s. Early programs often simply bore the name of the venue, or titles like The Stage. The earliest attempt at program consistency across Broadway were 1920s covers that featured artwork representative of the venue that remained the same show to show, like this 1925 cover from the Winter Garden Theatre.

Though still not published with the name Playbill, this cover from Earl Carroll’s Vanities of 1930 was one of the first to use the sepia color and text format that became the general template for Playbill covers through the 1950s.

Mid-1930s: Productions Adopt the Name “The Playbill”

The Playbill name officially arrives on Broadway covers in the mid-1930s. This 1934 Music Box Theatre cover for Merrily We Roll Along (the George S. Kauffman-Moss Hart play that was the source material for the Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical) shows a Playbill of its day. Notice at this point it’s “The” Playbill, decades before Facebook launched as TheFacebook.com. Ahead of our time?

This is the first design era featured in the Playbill Legacy Covers collection, and this very vintage Playbill was used as the model for the current designs. But there's one important change from the Merrily Playbill—most of today's productions elected to go with show-specific imagery in the center, giving a modern spin to this classic design.

There's actually a secret "second" change, too, for the extra detail-oriented theatre nerds out there. "Alex and I both agreed that while original Playbills from the 1930s and '40s were probably white, we wanted to present a look of nostalgia to those covers," says Greer. "We've never seen a perfectly preserved Playbill from those periods in pristine condition, so we chose to apply a slight tint to those covers to achieve that. Some of the detail on the 1930s which was impossible to reproduce has also been updated with modern art."

Additional note: There was no standard logo during this period. Kill That Story, which opened at the Booth Theatre a few days after Life Begins at 8:40, featured “The Playbill” in a different font and printed on a banner.

This logo—from the Playbill for Order Please at the Playhouse Theatre in 1934—is the most common design during this period, though not the only one. If you have a font called "Playbill" on your computer, this is the design on which that font is based.

The cover for the 1934 original production of Anything Goes is an early example of show-specific artwork appearing on a Playbill cover, though you’ll notice the title of the production is nowhere to be found. Also worth mentioning is that this was extremely pre-Photoshop; you are likely looking at a physical collage that someone had to cut out by hand.

Late 1930s: Show Titles Appear on the Cover

Show titles begas appearing on Playbill covers as early as 1937, as in this cover from The Masque of Kings.

This script Playbill logo, seen here on the cover for 1937’s Yes, My Darling Daughter, was one of the more popular variants of the font.

1940s: Playbill Branding Moves Around

By the mid-1940s, this format—with the show’s title above a production photo and the Playbill logo—was the most common. This cover is from the original production of The Glass Menagerie in 1945.

A slightly new logo—with a de-emphasis on the “The,” and “Playbill” in solid black text—begins appearing in the late 1940s, such as this cover from the original run of Damn Yankees in 1957.

This exact cover is the model for the second Playbill Legacy Cover.

1950s: Just “Playbill”—and the first major re-design

“The Playbill” became Playbill, as we know and love it today, in the late 1950s. This is also the first time that Playbill got a major re-design and the first major standardized cover format, seen here in this 1960 cover for West Side Story. The font used for “Playbill,” while similar to the prior font, is shorter and features the angled serifs that we still use today. The theatre name is printed to the left of the Playbill header, with the bulk of the cover used for black-and-white production photography and the title of the show in a plain font ("Futura," for inquiring minds).

These covers are the model for the third of our Playbill Legacy Covers. They also have a surprising connection to our current cover design—but more on that later.

"Everyone knows that my favorite cover era is the 1960s mid-century design," says Greer. "The geometric elements of the cover are reminiscent of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, who passed away in 1944. The design is evocative of the abstract art movement of the 20th century. The simplicity of the colorful header complements the black-and-white art below and creates a really stunning cover!"

Though most shows used the now-trademark yellow background header, a number of non-yellow colors were used as well during this era, as seen in these covers from the original production of Auntie Mame.

Shows began to use more individualized, designed cover art in the late ’60s, as seen on this cover from the original 1968 production of Promises, Promises.

1973: Playbill Tries Multi-Colored Headers

In the '70s, Playbill took a cue from the culture and got funky. Playbill’s first multi-colored header came in 1973 with the magazine’s most dramatic redesign, seen here with the cover for the original production of A Little Night Music. Though these might look the most different from today's design, they are actually the first covers featuring the Playbill header across the full width of the page. The theatre name sits centered and beneath the Playbill logo—a format we’ve been using ever since. These are also the first covers to use the white margin on all sides. That border was in use until 2016. These rainbow covers lasted only a year, but they’re pretty distinctive! They're also the model for the fourth and final Playbill Legacy Cover.

1974-2016: The Modern Playbill Cover Debuts

A year after the “groovy” design, Playbill reverted to the logo font used before the 1973 redesign, and the solid yellow header background returned as well. The overall formatting changes from the ’73 design were retained, ultimately resulting in the first cover design to look like what most people consider the modern Playbill cover. This cover, from Liza Minnelli’s 1974 Broadway concert engagement, was one of the first to feature this design. You'll notice, however, the "Playbill" font still looks squashed compared to how it looks today. These earliest covers carried the logo treatment over from those '60s covers.

A few months after debuting this design, the Playbill font was vertically stretched to become the Playbill logo that we know today, as seen in the cover for the original production of Over Here! that opened in March 1974. This exact design became the standard for more than four decades.

2000s: Special Editions

We’ve gotten to do some special cover designs over the years, making anniversary covers with altered headers, such as this Wicked Playbill that commemorated the show's fifth anniversary in 2008.

2014: Playbill Debuts Playbill Pride

The first-ever (full) rainbow-themed header and logo to celebrate LGBTIA+ Pride Month premiered in June 2014. The new cover design was accompanied with Pride-themed editorial content inside the magazine itself. We've been celebrating Playbill Pride with these colorful covers ever since, every June for the entire month.

2015: Select Shows See a Redesign With Historical Roots

Beginning in 2015, select shows reflected another redesign with a full-bleed borderless cover. Though this time, we kept our modern logo and the modern header format. These covers were also heavily inspired by the design of '60s Playbill covers—some even used black and white production photography for a fully retro experience.

2016: The Redesign Spreads Playbill-Wide

This cover design became the default for all shows (with The Book of Mormon remaining a notable exception) in July 2016, which brings us to the standard Playbill cover design of today. This is also our most recent major re-design, now featured at the regional and touring venues we serve as well.

2017: Playbill Pride Covers Follow Suit

For Pride Month 2017, the first after the re-design, Playbill Pride got its own full-bleed, borderless version, adapted from the original Pride header.

2018: The New Pride Rainbow

In June 2018, Playbill premiered a new design for LGBT pride, featuring a rainbow gradient in place of the color blocks.

2019: A Stonewall-Inspired Pride Anniversary Logo

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, widely considered an early flashpoint in the fight for LGBTQIA+ civil rights, Playbill Pride featured yet another new logo that placed the Pride rainbow on bricks.

2024: Playbill Legacy Covers

And here we are! Playbill reached back to our past design eras for this project celebrating our 140th anniversary. Each show designed all four of their own special Legacy covers, which are only available in theatres throughout the month of October. Greer worked directly with each show's ad agency to develop each special cover design. "Each one provided unique, interesting, and clever art for their covers," says Greer. "I provided them with examples of other Playbill covers from the same periods as inspiration and research. Once art was placed in the cover templates, we could all get a better idea of the finished design. If we saw something which might be improved or handled differently, we would reach out to the design team and make them aware. We only provided suggestions and technical information to the design teams—they did a great job."

See more of the collectible cover designs at Playbill.com/140-Anniversary-Playbills. You can purchase posters for each show with all of the retro designs at The Playbill Store.