Reel 03Case studyRecord label · 2010–2026
New School Recordings
Sixteen years of creative direction for an electronic label, from the crown to a catalogue you can spin.
In spring 2010 New School Recordings asked me to help build their online presence and grow them into an international record label. It became my first long run as a creative director: identity, website, club nights, merch, album art, video, and, in 2026, a complete rebuild of how the label shows up online.
- Role
- Creative direction, visual design, art direction, web & UI/UX
- Client
- New School Recordings · Boston
- Scope
- Brand, web, events, album art, video, social content
- Years
- 2010–2026
A turntable that keeps playing
An archive of the nights
A catalogue you can spin
The brief was simple: the old site had aged. Its code and its look were starting to feel dated, and parts of it had stopped working in current browsers. The slider and the audio player didn't display properly in some browsers and vanished completely in others. For a record label, a site where you can't hear the music is a real problem.
Sixteen years after the first site, I rebuilt it around the thing a record label actually is: a catalogue. Every release carries its catalogue number, NSR001 to NSR042, so the homepage reads like a shelf of records rather than a news feed.
The rebuild also gave me room for an idea I'd wanted for a while: a turntable right on the homepage, with 33⅓, 45 and a pitch fader. Anyone who lands on the site can play the releases on the spot, without leaving the page or searching for the music elsewhere. You can also cue songs into a playlist that keeps playing while you look around the rest of the site.
A ticker of the label's attitude runs under the navigation, and where an about page would usually go, there's a four-line manifesto instead.
- We sign records, not careers.
- No genres. No gatekeepers. No filler.
- The floor is the only A&R.
- If it doesn't move the room, it doesn't ship.
The manifesto, as it appears on the homepage.
The site is also an archive of every past New School night and of the mix series that started in 2011. The old streams are long gone, but every tracklist survived. It's there as memorabilia, and as a starting point if the New School nights ever come back as a club series.
Dark, gold, a crown
A crown for the dance floor
The first step was translating the label's values into a visual language that could run across every digital and physical platform. The brand had four traits to carry:
- Modern and dynamic
- Trend-setting
- High quality
- Unique and distinctive
To hold them, I chose a dark colour scheme with elements of gold, and made a crown the central visual element: a sign of leadership in electronic music and of the trend-setting quality of the releases. The gold and the dark are still there in 2026.
Custom music player
Shop, podcast, events
Building the first home
Next came the online presence, starting with the website: a first-generation WordPress platform with a custom-built music player, newsletter, events page, podcast section and an e-commerce shop.
The site grew with the label over its first three years, with new releases, artists and club nights. These are the homepages from 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Merch
Album covers
Posters, merch and every cover
New School Nights
Once the website was live, I moved to posters, flyers and merchandise for the label's bi-monthly club night at Rise Club Boston. The series was called New School Nights.
Album covers
As designer and creative director I was also in charge of the cover art for each of the label's releases.
Longer listening
Music visualizers
Social content
Room to listen
Consistent branding and a regular release schedule, backed by well-organised promo packages, had grown the label's audience. It was time to update the website again. Responsive design, longer listening times and a better organised media library came first, supported by easier navigation and a more breathable layout that guided people through the music.
Music visualizers
As part of the digital content strategy, we introduced music visualizers to support the new release schedule, built from pre-recorded footage, visual effects, and custom graphics and animation.
Social content
Every release also needed to live where people actually listen and scroll. I created the content for all of the label's social platforms, from Instagram and SoundCloud to Spotify and YouTube, so each one looked and sounded like New School.
Album covers
I kept designing the cover art through the redesign years, for label releases and for artists like GR33D.
More than design
This project didn't just grow my visual design. It taught me video editing, digital strategy, event organisation, overseeing music production and distribution, working with a wide range of industry specialists, and carrying a project through every stage of its life.
I learned to work around technical limits (website features), user experience challenges (listening to audio inside a website), and strategy hurdles (growing a label's reach and audience). The best part, of course, was discovering great music and making friends along the way.