Spotlight on: Senior Creative Manager Chelsea Crouse

Chelsea Crouse is an artist through and through. As Houston Grand Opera’s Senior Creative Manager, she is the mind behind the company’s signature eye-popping marketing designs. From billboards to flyers to programs, direct mail to social media graphics to the company magazine Opera Cues and beyond, Chelsea’s creative vision is essential to telling HGO’s story and attracting Houstonians to the Wortham Theater Center. Her artistry shines through in everything she does, with her bold, colorfully stylish wardrobe making as much of a statement as her work—in fact, we may never have seen her wear the same thing twice. 

Playful as her outfits may be, Chelsea is nothing but serious when it comes to art, graphic design, and managing large projects with seemingly infinite moving pieces. She initially worked in education before making her full transition to the arts upon joining HGO four years ago. A Pennsylvania native, Chelsea moved to Texas in 2013 to be with her now-husband, who proposed to her the week she arrived! They’ve since started a family together, and when she’s not on the clock she’s spending time with their two-and-a-half-year-old son, Finnegan.  

Here’s Chelsea on her life and career, in her own words:  

My journey with the company actually started during COVID. I interviewed in March of 2020, and the next day the whole city shut down. At that point I thought, well, that was fun, but I guess it’s just not meant to be. About a month later the director of marketing called saying, yes, they’d still love to hire me even though the world was on pause. I started working in May of 2020. Of course, the season was scrapped because of COVID, so for the first 15 or 16 months I was fully remote while we pivoted to digital performances. I went into the office for the first time in fall 2021 when live performances started back up with Carmen. It was a full circle moment to finally be in the theater and see what I’d been working on for so long. It was just so much fun, and I wanted more of it. 

I always knew I wanted to be in the arts. I loved painting. I loved drawing. But I’ve always had this Type A personality where I’m like, how is this going to put food on the table? So, I tried to think of career paths that were a bit more practical, and graphic design was that thing for me.  

What I think would surprise most people is the sheer volume of work we generate through our team. Just today I’ve been working on two flyers, I’ve been inside of a program. I’ve been working on a bunch of signs for Miller Outdoor Theatre and the box office here at the Wortham. And if we’re in the midst of the season we’ll be working on multiple magazine designs a day, too. The storage we have on our computers for this stuff is just mind-blowing. We need more of it! 
 

The most important part of designing a piece is research, research, research. When I get an idea, I’ll go online and just do a bunch of searches on the opera. Google is my friend. I’ll look for different fonts and images, create a little mood board, and then take that inspiration and turn it into a layout. I don’t just willy-nilly throw something on a piece of paper, I have intent behind my choices. Ultimately, it comes down to understanding the material and making an informed design decision. 

This year, I was really taken by Intelligence. The blend of dance and song was beautiful, and I thought it was a really important piece to tell. And then, I really enjoyed Werther last year, especially the staging. I was immediately drawn to this romantic, neoclassical-looking set with these very straight geometric lines, and I was so enthralled by the beauty of the lighting and the way everything looked. 

 
To succeed in this role, you have to be completely objective about your work. I have a fine arts background, where it’s common to be emotionally tied to and passionate about your work because what you’re creating is personal. Commercial art and graphic design are very much not that. It’s for the consumer. It’s meant for a company to build a brand or to promote a product, right? The feedback you receive—you can’t take it personally because it’s not your personal work. It’s for the company.  

The reason I enjoy working at HGO is that, for me as a creative person, it’s really important to be around other creative people who are passionate about what they do. For me, it’s all about art and graphic design and typography, whereas a lot of people around here are professionally trained singers or musicians. But you still feed off that energy, even if it’s not necessarily the same kind of creativity.