In spring 2010 I have been contacted by New School Recordings to help build an online presence and develop their brand as an international record label. Excited by the opportunity to sharpen my Visual Design and Art Direction skills, as well as starting my journey as a creative director, I have accepted the wonderful creative challenge.
The first step was translating the brand values into a visual language that will be implemented across all digital and physical platforms.
Brand Traits:
- Modern and dynamic
- Trend-setting
- High quality
- Unique and distinctive
To highlight these features, I selected a dark color scheme with elements of gold. Also incorporated the crown design as a central visual element, in order to symbolize leadership in the electronic music field and the trend-setting quality of the releases.
Next step was crafting the online presence, starting with the website – which was built as a first-generation WordPress powered platform.
The website featured a custom build music player, newsletter, events page, podcast section and e-commerce shop.
After the website was finished, the next step was creating posters, flyers, and merchandise for the New School bi-monthly club night hosted by Rise Club Boston. The series of events were named New School Nights.
As part of my designer and creative director duties, I was also happy to be in charge with creating album cover graphics for each of the record label’s releases.
After increasing New School Recordings’ audience and online presence through consistent branding and visual design – plus a regular release schedule supported by well organized promo packages – it was time to update again the functionality of the website in order to accommodate better features.
Responsive design, longer listening times, as well as a better organized media library were one of the first usability features implemented. Supported by easier navigation and a more breathable layout, the information was better formatted and guided the user in a seamless manner.
As part of the digital content strategy, we introduced music visualizers and visuals to support New School Recordings new release schedule.
To achieve this, I used pre-recorded footage and visual effects, as well as custom made graphics and animations.
As part of my designer and creative director duties, I was also happy to be in charge with creating album cover graphics for each of the record label’s releases.
Working on this project has offered me the fantastic opportunity to not only grow my design skills in the area of visual design, but to also learn and incorporate other skills like video editing, digital strategy, being part of event organization, overseeing music production and distribution, communicating with a variety of industry specialists, and handling the entire project life-cycle through all of its stages or challenges.
I have learned to overcome limitations in terms of technical capabilities (like website features), user experience challenges (listening audio inside the website), as well as strategy hurdles (expanding the reach and the audience of the record label).
The best part was, of course, the joy of discovering great music and making friends along the way 🙂