Bringing Unmastered to Life:
Creative Direction for a Cultural Platform
Creative Director, Photographer
2022-2024
Unmastered is a multimedia creative project—a podcast, 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.
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Create a brand identity for a deeply personal project that doesn't look like every other podcast without sacrificing legibility or system thinking.
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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.
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Identity, podcast cover art, episode graphics, social system, multiple zine issues (each distinct), photography, set design, video production.
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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.
Process
LOGO & WORDMARKS
The typographic approach
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 but they were a feature. The project is about the multitudes within a single person and the logo reflects that.
Listen to the conversation
ZINE ISSUES
THE MANIFESTO