Paulina Martz
Graphic Designer
Chicago, IL
About Me
I am a Chicago-based graphic designer focused on visual storytelling with strong communication and collaboration skills.
My design career began in nonprofit theatre, where strong visuals are essential to storytelling and audience engagement. Through that work I learned to think about design as both narrative and informative.
My past experience has been in print, digital, and collaborative design. I am an ambitious and hardworking individual, with a proven ability to manage timelines, resources, and stakeholder expectations effectively.
Technical Skills
Production Program
The Antiquities - Show Playbill
Season 35 Barrel Roll 4-panel show playbill
About the Project: Speakeasy Stage Company transitioned from an 18-page traditional playbill to a condensed barrel-fold brochure. The challenge: fit almost the same volume of required content into a smaller format without it feeling cluttered.
Impact: The final piece feels modern, immersive, and intentional — allowing audiences to engage with the content without perceiving the reduced format.
What I Did:
-
Designed full brochure layout within strict copy constraints
-
Created typographic hierarchy for dense informational sections
-
Developed a continuous interior spread to avoid panel fragmentation
-
Maintained brand consistency within Speakeasy’s style guide
-
Provided layout feedback to improve clarity and flow
Impact: The final piece feels modern, immersive, and intentional — allowing audiences to engage with the content without perceiving the reduced format.
Production Program - Extended
The Antiquities - Show Playbill
Season 34 traditional 18-page playbill
About the Project: Before Speakeasy Stage Company transitioned to a condensed barrel-fold brochure, there was an 18-page traditional playbill. Click through to see the whole program!
Impact: The final piece feels traditional, informative, and easy to navigate.
What I Did:
-
Designed full brochure layout within strict copy constraints
- Stayed within ghte company’s historic program formats while updating and innovating where possible.
- Echoed traditional playbill and program designs standard in the industry.
- Created typographic hierarchy for dense informational sections
- Maintained brand consistency within Speakeasy’s style guide
Impact: The final piece feels traditional, informative, and easy to navigate.
Production Poster
If/Then - Show Poster
11x17 Poster
About the Project: If/Then is a contemporary musical about a woman at a crossroads. Her life splits into two parallel paths based on a single decision. Set in New York, the city becomes central to the story as she encounters the same people under entirely different circumstances in each version of her reality.
Impact: The final design communicates the show’s dual structure without being literal. The architectural symmetry, urban typography, and color-coded overlay work together to visually reinforce the tension between fate and choice while grounding the story in New York City.
What I Did:
- Designed custom title typography with a bold, slightly distressed texture to reflect the show’s urban energy
-
Illustrated a stylized New York cityscape inspired by the Flatiron Building
-
Composed the layout around two diverging paths to symbolize the split narrative
- Applied a strong color gradient overlay referencing the production’s lighting design, which signals which timeline the audience is following
Impact: The final design communicates the show’s dual structure without being literal. The architectural symmetry, urban typography, and color-coded overlay work together to visually reinforce the tension between fate and choice while grounding the story in New York City.
POSTER DESIGN
I design posters that distill complex stories into bold, immediate visual statements.
Each composition balances hierarchy, atmosphere, and clarity to communicate quickly and memorably.