In my level 6 project, I worked with a client, who is a DJ and electronic musician, to conceptualise their branding, create visuals for both live performances and social media use, and a website - or “minisite” - that acts as a central hub for everything. My client is someone I know personally who DJ’s and does some music production as a hobby. I thought this project would be an exciting opportunity to see what his hobby could look like if he was a professional DJ and musician.
Brand Identity
I started the ideation period by creating a collaborative moodboard on Milonote. I chose this tool after learning that it would allow us to work collaboratively and add an array of media including images, video and GIFs. I asked my client to add some ideas for things he likes and that have inspired him. I encouraged him to keep it broad, including music-related things but also anything that has affected him in some way. I felt that this would help to capture that personal element to it that I had mentioned previously in the initial research I undertook.
I also added my own ideas to the board, not only to encourage my client to feel comfortable in adding his but also to see where my client and I overlapped in ideas, as this would help guide the direction we’d both want to take things in.
The end result of the moodboard included AV performance art, live AV concerts, music videos, promotional art, short form experimental videos, animated shorts, art, scenes from films, video games, logos, advertisements and television idents.
The first thing I wanted to work on with my client was the logo and branding. As my client has only done music as a hobby, it meant a complete blank slate for us to come up with an identity together. He had no stage name, so we discussed ideas of a stage name together. He said that one of his favourite words and colours was “magenta”, and as his first name is Joe, I suggested “Joe Magenta”, which I also feel works due to the consonance created by the repeating “j” sound.
For the logo, my client wanted something graphic with a nostalgic feel. These are the logos I collected that I felt could work as inspiration. From these, the circular logos, particularly the Mowalola one (a play on the Walkman logo) would play a big part in shaping the logo to come. I was also inspired by the grungey Y2K logos of Underworld, The Streets and Oklou, which lead to another moodboard session exploring this aesthetic to shape the overall art direction.
In a previous module, I had created a typeface as part of an artist response to Neville Brody. I was reminded of the poster I had created while creating this moodboard and felt the typeface would be a perfect fit for the logo. I built the logo around my client’s initials and the circular motif found in logos from Aphex Twin and Mowalola. I created the logo in Illustrator, and began to animate it further using Blender and After Effects.
Finally, I created the ident, where I also incorporated more of the original typeface and used sounds from the PlayStation2.
Audioreactive Music Visualisers
Starting once again with some moodboards, I found a recurring theme in the visuals was this Gen X Soft Club look and feel, with an urban setting. The following videos were made using a combination of TouchDesigner and After Effects.