WORK / ART DIRECTION / BRAND AND EDITORIAL
Bringing Unmastered to Life:
Art Direction for a Cultural Platform
CLIENT: Self-initiated
ROLE: Art Director · Brand Designer · Photographer
DELIVERABLES: Brand · Podcast · Zines · Photography · Video
YEAR: 2022-Present
Multimedia creative project built from the inside out
Unmastered is a multimedia creative project — a podcast, a zine, and a brand — built around honest conversations about creativity, identity, and growth. I was responsible for the full creative direction: shaping the visual language from concept through every touchpoint. The brief I set for myself was to create a brand that resisted the polished, algorithmic aesthetic of most podcast brands and instead felt handmade, heartfelt, and human.
CHALLENGE
Create a brand identity for a deeply personal project that doesn't look like every other podcast — without sacrificing legibility or system thinking.
APPROACH
Handwritten typography as the primary mark. Three logo variations to reflect the project's themes of multiplicity and self-definition. Emotional consistency over visual uniformity.
SCOPE
Identity, podcast cover art, episode graphics, social system, multiple zine issues (each distinct), photography, set design, video production.
OUTCOME
A recognizable visual identity across platforms — spanning a zine series with its own editorial following, and a world where photography and design are indistinguishable from each other.
TYPOGRAPHIC APPROACH: WHY HANDWRITTEN?
Handwritten type resists replication. That was the point.
Most podcast brands are built on a clean sans-serif and a bold colour. Unmastered needed to feel like it came from somewhere specific — from a person, not a template. Using my own handwriting as the primary typographic mark made the brand impossible to replicate without losing its identity. Authenticity as a design system, not a value statement.
The three logo variations (UNM, unmastered, (un)mastered) weren't inconsistency — they were a feature. The project is about the multitudes within a single person. The logo reflects that.
01—SCOPE OF WORK
02 — LOGO & WORDMARKS
03 — ZINE ISSUES
The manifesto that guides everything.
Driven by curiosity and built on purpose — before we recorded a single episode, we wrote this. It's the set of principles that shaped every conversation, every creative decision, and every moment of doubt along the way. Not rules — more like reminders. When we didn't know what to do next, we came back here.
Where it all started
Episode 12 marks one year of the (un)mastered tapes — a podcast about creativity, identity, and the honest parts of making things. A good place to start if this is your first listen, to hear our learnings, our intentions behind the podcast, and get a feel for our message and tone.