Audio Animal, a new Los Angeles recording project created by local dj/producers Oodee and Malio, is attempting to secure quick online presence for their wide selection of dance tracks.  They want to elicit a style that’s unique and unpredictable, as well as a brand image that’s ample enough to encompass a wide array of musical genres from dance to indie to experimental soundtracks and ambient.

With the preponderance of digital downloading, and an international nightclub crowd that is constantly expanding, the electronic music scene is now more saturated, diverse, and competitive than ever.  To succeed, a new label must have sufficient talent and ingenuity, as well as a grasp of the nuances of the marketplace and its shifting trends.  A good-looking Brand ID can help, especially if the core values of the brand are effectively typified by the design, and just as importantly, the application and usage of the logotype.

Audio Animal, as a name, ostensibly stands out – and it might be tempting to create a figurative interpretation of the phrase, combining the image of an ‘animal’ with some representation of ‘audio’, likely a speaker (in fact, we’ve included at least one direction that is comprised of those two depictions) – but simple literal deduction does not necessarily arouse interest beyond the merely visible.  There are numerous solutions for a logotype that can evoke the descriptive components of a title like Audio Animal – most of them quite obvious.  It’s the conspicuousness that presents the challenge: how can we create a unique and impressionable brand ID, if the look of it is predictable, and therefore manifestly unremarkable?  Which is not to say that an obvious solution will fail; in fact it might just be the harbinger of commercial success, and it’s why we’ve included at least one direction that is outwardly unsurprising.  However, if the label is to present itself as a product that’s original and captivating, a bit of exploration, abstraction and innovation might also pay off.

Here’s the main image for LATC’s Face of the World, aka, their Fall season.  I feel like the Historic Core, as it’s been designated by downtown LA booster types, saw it’s heyday just around the Wall Street Crash of 29.  With the exception of a few New Deal building constructed for civic aims, the late 20’s was when all construction pretty much halted.  So the neighborhood around Spring, Main and Broadway between 2nd and 9th is like a time capsule of the era.  Stunning facades abound (and regrettably several completely dilapidated, and others facing a worse fate from callous developers), and the uninterrupted collection of 20’s buildings along 7th Street is a favorite for film shoots looking for a plausible Manhattan street scene.

As the LATC is pretty much in the thick of it all, we’ve attempted to encapsulate the historic charm of the neighborhood, add bit of postmodern irony, an lure people into the high drama that is downtown Los Angeles.

The LATC’s fall season, Face of the World starts in September, which means we’ve got to go to print with the collateral last week.  Keeping the posters very title-centric, which might prove to be a more attractive solution than the time consuming illustrations that I had planned to do.  I’m going to try out that ‘less is more’ thing.  These are the first two production posters, 6 more to go.

Published in 1984, Aradi Nora So-Ky Kepzomuveszeti Kiado Aradi Nora, is a collection of 34 posters created by the Hungarian design duo, So-Ky. I picked it up in Budapest when was traveling in the Eastern Bloc as a student in the late 80’s, and since then it’s been one of my most influential and inspirational possessions. I’m going to try and get a translation of the text, all of which is in Hungarian, and I suspect reveals quite a bit about the political and aesthetic motivations of this most prodigious team.  I’ve managed to find one copy selling for €50 at the Parisian rare-book store, Librairie la Poussière du Temps, located in Saint-Germain at 16 Rue de Tournon, and it’s also available online through the same link.  I highly recommend that you get your hands on this collection, it’s peerless as both as a memento of late European Communism, as well as a stunning exemplar of the graphics that accompanied this tumultuous age.  In addition to the poster collection, a 30 page black and white catalog of earlier poster work, as well as a selection of late-communist era logotypes, is included.

The Accidental Illustrator

In 1996, in the east village of Manhattan, there was a fab restaurant called Global 33. The theme was ‘airline chic’, and the decor evoked a business class lounge at, say, the Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport in Rio de Janeiro, but when the airport was called simply Galeão, say in the 60’s (if, of course, there had been business class in the 60’s). Colorola’s Stuart Patterson, being something of an airline fetishist, naturally fell in love with the place, and proposed creating some illustrations for the 33 back-lit display mountings that lined one wall of the restaurant. He had been playing around with some very rudimentary vector illustrations of airline interiors, and when he showed the owners of the place, they were convinced, and an installation was produced in the fall of 1996.

Enter Tyler Brûlé, at the time a former BBC journalist scrambling to put together a new magazine in London called Wallpaper*. He happened to dine at Global 33 while Stuart’s show was up and determined to commission the illustrator for his upcoming publication. The problem was that Stuart really wasn’t an illustrator, he was a graphic designer that played around a bit with Freehand.  Furthermore, he’d split New York, and was couch-surfing in San Francisco. This is just before the advent of the ‘portable mobile phone device’, and internet service was still a bit slapdash, so Stuart was difficult to track down (he’d actually gone to Mexico City for a couple of weeks, to make matters worse). Then Tyler picked up a copy of the, at-the-time-pretty-much-local magazine, Surface*, no doubt concerned about their protruding asterisk.

This was when Stuart was doing the graphics for the Sound Factories of New York and San Francisco, and in this capacity, had created a Sound Factory ad for the back cover of Surface*. Tyler, ever the vigilant, recognized the work as Stuart’s, and promptly contacted Sound Factory.

Stuart practically learned the illustration trade traytabling his PowerBook 5300 on the way to Toronto to work on the inaugural issue of Wallpaper*. The naive line and color of his earlier work contributed to the approachable, human quality of the early Wallpaper* editorial, and was an integral part of the Wallpaper*’look’ that has influenced the publishing industry and popular aesthetics to this day.

Dramatic Changes

The Latino Theater Company’s impressive home is located in downtown Los Angeles at the center of a burgeoning new art scene.  This company, under the creative direction of Jose Luis Valenzuela, operates the Los Angeles Theatre Center, and is one of 3 preeminent theater companies residing there. Together with the Robey Theatre Co and the Playwrights Arena, the LTC create 2 dramatic seasons annually: Face of the World in the fall, and a spring festival, East of Broadway.  Many of the productions are original, fostered by in house programs and resources like the Playwrights Initiative.  Colorola was enlisted to manage the branding of the LATC in 2009.  We completely overhauled all visual communications, and we continue to create and manage the promotion and visual identity for each production, as well as corporate brand management, fund raising, special events, administrative communication, and community services and outreach.

Though we’ll happily take credit for the over-all rebranding of the LATC, one of our greatest accomplishments was the resuscitation the long-ignored and woefully abandoned original logotype, created in 1985, and in our opinion, one of the coolest design artifacts of LA’s 80’s zeitgeist.  Nearly every vestige of this logo had been removed from the LATC brand; however, the rigorously amalgamated iron lettering on building’s facade and portico remained, and when we saw, we had to have it.

With 4 state-of-the-art auditoriums, this elaborate facility is one of the top performance spaces in the country. It’s an architectural  The unique edifice is actually a hybrid of two distinct structures, a 1920’s Beaux-Artes bank building designed by John Parkinson, and a strikingly modern addition, designed by LA’s John Sergion Fischer & Associates.

Drawing a Crowd

Like many forms of art and entertainment, theater in Los Angeles, though often eclipsed by the movie industry, is a competitive enterprise. With so many diversions, from the beaches to the mountains (and so many freeways in between), attracting crowds to live performances that don’t typically feature Hollywood megastars or the Lakers is a challenge.  We decided to apply some of the same strategies that have proven so successful in attracting thousands of Southern Californians to electronic music events and festivals. Creating unique, eye-catching illustrations, we were able to initiate a narrative, and additionally, integrate the theme into the overall seasonal collateral. In two seasons, we’ve managed to contribute to a dramatic increase in overall attendance by supplementing the extraordinary stage performances with original illustrated posters, giving each production a definitive look, and a thorough marketing strategy. The rest, as they say, is showbiz.

A Renaissance in Tenseltown

Thanks to a jaw-dropping interior restoration and redesign, spearheaded by artist/designer, Roy Nachum, the Music Box has recaptured its original grandeur.  It has also been re-equipped with state-of-the-art light and sound, and is now irrefutably one of the most extraordinary live venues in the world.  Originally constructed in 1926 by vaudeville impresario, Carter DeHaven, the Music Box has a remarkable past.  We explored a wealth of historical references which accordingly inspired our rebranding of the legendary Hollywood landmark.  Our objective was to revive some of the building’s historic charm and mystique, without overplaying the elements or settling for mere pastiche.

Hollywood Regal Matters

The owners were adamant about retaining a crest, some form of which had been utilized at the theater since the 1920’s.  We were reluctant to go this route because of the ubiquitous use of heraldic imagery for the last 10 years, from local nightclubs to the epitome of all things overused, Ed Hardy.  So it was important to avoid anything that looked like vector clip-art, or tattoo filigree.  The only way to ensure uniqueness was to draw it ourselves.  There were other considerations as well: the logo had to be simplified to enable embroidery applications to the backs of several 100 theater seats; it had to work in a digital format, as well as print; and ultimately it had to function in different markets, from live rock concerts, to club nights, to private events.  Through several incarnations, we managed to create an icon that reflected some of the ornate Victorian features of the venue’s architecture, with a customized font that evoked classic movie titles.  We also devised a variety of treatments that could be applied across numerous production and promotional platforms.  In addition to the ‘Classic Crest’, we created an auxiliary volume of historic style logotypes that can be used as an alternative, adding diversification to the overall brand, but keeping the core values of the Music Box at the forefront.