UI/UX May 1, 2010

New School Recordings Creative Direction

The building of New School Recordings brand

The beginning: Brand guidelines

May 2010

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.

New School Recordings Logo Design

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.

Web Design and UI/UX

Continuing the branding journey

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.

Merchandise and New School Nights

dedicated club night & merch

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.

Album Covers

custom made album cover designs

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.

2015-2017 Redesign

upgrading the visual design and user experience

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.

Introducing Music Visualizers

visuals supporting music releases

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.

Album Covers

custom made album cover designs

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.

Final thoughts

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 🙂

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