Digital Dozen processMay 2025
TEAM: Brian Sadler (Senior Art Director)
ROLE: Graphic designer
TOOLS: Adobe Illustrator
Digital Dozen is a series of playlists, showing off hits from famous older artists like Aretha Franklin, Yes, and Judy Collins.
UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE
The goal of Digital Dozen is to promote older musicians’ in a digital format. Rhino had previously done a similar series in vinyl, and since younger generations tend to use streaming services more often, I wanted to create a clean, colorful language that would catch the eye of the 18-30 demographic and turn them into fans for life.
Since this was my first high-visibility branding project, I sought advice from Jossilyn Lane and Rachel Gutek, long-time art directors who’ve worked on branding at Rhino for years.
EARLY ITERATIONS
I bounced drafts back and forth with the project’s manager, Brian. Initially, we thought of doing a sidebar to match with the vinyl release version of this series but I proposed that we should change the logo to a larger sticker-ish format to make it look visible when it’s shrunk down in an Apple music thumbnail. Brian helped me nail down the typography and pushed me to be more abstract with the logo, which helped me land on a final version I’m satisfied with.
FINALIZING THE LOGO
I played around with some ideas in a square format, and settled on a logo which combined the symbolism of a dozen (dots), a fast forward icon, the initials “DD”, and a retro gelatinous feel.
A dozen dots + fast forward icon + DD + retro gelatinous feel
VISUAL IDENTITY
Since I couldn’t use photos, I wanted the type to the be focus of each cover. I took the bold colors, which are different for each playlist, from an album for each of the artists.
RELEASE
Listen to the playlist series on Apple Music, Juno Download, and High Res Audio.