This flexible identity system for playlist website Tonangeber enables users to create their own gemstone-inspired cover art.
Spanish studio TwoPoints.Net (opens in new tab) has designed a flexible identity system for music playlist website Tonangeber (opens in new tab). Initially hired to create a site for DJs Ani Antunovic and Beda San, who compile and share playlists for free, the studio ended up custom-building a graphics generator that enables users to produce their own cover artwork, packaging, posters and stationery.
Inspired by precious or rare gems, the graphics are intended to evoke minerals in a petri dish. However, developing the system was more complex than the studio first realised.
"The visual system had to be flexible enough to express the mood of each playlist, but coherent enough to create a recognisable brand," explains Two Points' Martin Lorenz. "The diversity of colours in elements and backgrounds had to be planned very carefully, so every combination would work."
The colour palette for the Tonangeber identity was initially based on personal taste. TwoPoints later created a palette that could work in any combination.
Photographs of paper and stone were used to create the different textures used across the identity.
The graphics generator enables users to arrange five forms around a circular template, which can be rotated and distorted to create myriad variations.
TwoPoints achieved coherence across the identity through careful use of form, while allowing diversity through a varied colour palette.
Martin Lorenz explains the visual concept by likening the compilation of playlists to going on an expedition: "The DJs are searching for rare musical treasures. The graphics are like small, beautiful collections."
The intellectual side of the project and the questions it raised appealed to Lorenz. "For example," he says, "which parts of the process should be automised? What's the advantage of designing with processing?"
This article originally appeared in Computer Arts (opens in new tab) issue 229.
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