My role
- Design
- Art and creative direction
- Mentoring younger designers
- Management of the project
- Brand strategy
Client
Primephonic
Year
2021
The Challenge - bringing classical music to the digital era.
- Mostly 60+, male audience.
- Less digital-savvy users.
- Classical Music complex classification.
- Vast catalog.
- Complex search.
- Lack of digital visual assets from the past.
The solution
- Familiar elements, tested and existing solutions.
- Consistent design elements.
- Legible font.
- Visual simplification of vastly complex data.
- Color-coding classical music eras.
- Muted colors, pleasant to our audience.
- Using illustrations instead of photos.
The Logo
Logo
I decided to keep the old logotype and discard the pictorial mark.
The Font
Primary font
Legible and neutral Macklin Sans – works great in the app.
Secondary font
Macklin Display is a serif typeface that provides a classic tone designed to complement the Sans. works as well in a graphic display context (at large sizes) as it does in a reading context (at text sizes).
The Colors
Primary color Purple
Purple provides great contrast for white text. It stands out from our competitors and works well in the digital application field. Purple symbolizes power, nobility, luxury, and ambition.
Secondary color Gold
Gold is our highlight color. It has a great contrast on purple. It’s toned and elegant.
Secondary color Blue
Blue is used in CTA’s. It is also being used as a generic color not associated with any musical era. Creates a pleasant harmony with purple.
Tertiary colors
We created a tertiary color palette to visually differentiate classical music periods.
The Illustrations
Illustration style
As there is a lack of classical music visual assets made for the digital era, we need a different medium to represent our ideas. We decided to use illustrations as the most versatile and expressive medium.
Illustration style inspiration
The style of the illustration was inspired by the 5 lined staff used to note music and by the flowy lines of a soundwave.
The subjects are stylized, so just their main features are displayed, giving Primephonic a unique touch.
The Icons
Icons style
Icons are similar to our illustrations. Lines are flowy and continuous. The shapes are simplified.
Implementation of new Primephonic visual identity
Classical encounters podcast covers
Every era has its own assigned color to make the search easier. The whole set, that has been displayed in the app, creates a color spectrum making it easier to understand the chronological order of listening. The staff starts in the first cover and ends in the last – we show that all episodes create a complete podcast series. Notes on covers create a melody. Notation symbol is typical for the era. Icon of the podcast is consistent throughout all podcasts. This symbol is used on all Primephonic podcasts covers to make them easier to spot in the app.
Musical surprises
We use composers’ faces, the most recognizable element for our audience. Name on the cover is added for those who might not know how composers look. Every era has its own assigned color to make the search easier. Portraits (paintings in many styles) are unified by turning them B&W. With a simple trick of flipping the face, we draw attention to the playlist on the busy home page.
Mood playlists
By using patterns we can create a sense of calmness or agitation without making cover artwork busy or unpleasant for our older audience. Wavy patterns are using lines similar to our illustration style.
National landmarks playlists
We chose to illustrate the symbols of each country. Every playlist contains music from many eras so we cant use color coding here. We are using our Primary purple color.
Other examples of the Primephonic style
