My position as a professional musician, recording studio owner, and director at a creative agency would all converge at a pivotal and chaotic time for the music industry.
While this all began as an exercise in adapting current recording studios in response to discordant new trends, by the time we were complete, the result was not only a ground-up physical redesign but also the creation of a first-of-its-kind digital infrastructure that would realign this antiquated brick-and-mortar industry with the drastically changing modern demands. The result garnered large investor and industry buy-in.
Founder • Product Design • UX/UI • Prototyping
Founder • Product Design • UX/UI • Prototyping
Founder • Product Design • UX/UI • Prototyping
Founder • Product Design • UX/UI • Prototyping
The modern music and entertainment market moves at lightning speed, demanding content at an ever-increasing pace, but the antiquated infrastructure on which it is created is too slow, expensive, and disconnected to meet the moment.
Digital, on-demand booking system for talent, studio facilities, and gear
Industry-first modular production facilities that adapt to budget + needs
Integrated professional and social spaces
Connect talent to each other and professional opportunities
We chose to follow a design-thinking process for this project as it allows for the user to be placed front-and-center. The lifeblood of the evolving music industry based on independent professional is the creators/users, so any solution would need to be designed from the ground-up from their perspective.
Our journey to understand how we got here, and where the industry was going, would encompass:
Increased accessibility and reach has been steadily expanding the amount of professionals that require and can access audio environments and services. A majority of the content gets produced by Independent professionals, who have greatly expanded and diversified their skillsets. The needs of these individuals proved very different than the small amount of high budget projects that the infrastructure and workflows were built around.
Large expensive studios with lower budgets
Disconnected community that needs each other
Antiquated design misaligned to
modern needs
Newly independent pros disconnected from expertise
New solution must realign to the new normal of lower revenues and artist independence.
Designed for a previous, pre-crash generation, much of the old floor plan, infrastructure, and tools go to waste now. We found a lot of opportunities for adapting and realigning to meet modern workflows.
80% of creator respondents said that the growing disconnectedness between the industry and themselves was greatly hindering their careers.
This industry depends on interlocking talents, especially with in-person capabilities
For production AND community needs. In-person, physical interaction, and curated trust were a huge factor
The speed of the modern industry has increased exponentially but to find facilities and talent still takes word of mouth recommendations, chance availabilities, and
Growing user-base met with shuttering old-model studios necessitates the need to curate for many users at once, unlike traditional studios
Newly independent artists do not currently have the knowledge or resources to empower them to manage their careers properly.
Confusing laws around masters and publishing ownership leave creators open to exploitation yet legal services are priced largely out-of-reach.
Of the current workspace of options, no facility could accommodate the current combination of needs, and even the best of “personal production spaces” still required a large up-front investment and continued management and maintenance. Equally notable is users felt that digital networking
2 personas: 1 representing the up-and-coming independent creator, and the 2nd, a seasoned pro.
The growing user-base of audio environments and services fit into 2 main categories that we aimed to cater to so personas were created to better understand both established and emerging professionals.
Pro production environments too expensive and home production environments too unprofessional
Hard to scout talent and work opportunities in decetralized industry environment.
Financially and technically maintaining his studio as he is out of town for long spans of time
Large studio and production-related costs that are not advanced by his label anymore
Affordable, soundproofed workspace with access to additional tools and gear as-needed.
Access to an industry community to access work opportunity and on-demand talent
Adaptable production environments and tools.
Low-to-no commitments as he is touring/traveling much of the year.
IMPACT - EFFORT
Because of the high-cost environment, we needed to emphasize feasibility. While at the highest effort value, developing a new physical production infrastructure was also the highest impact, and without that foundation, all other potential solutions were almost moot.
We would focus solely on infrastructure, from which all the community-based solutions could be born out of.
Modernized, on-demand booking system for studios, gear, talent, and community.
Modular infrastructure that adapts to needs and matches budgets and workloads—ideally integrating social space
Our journey would start with what was familiar, the physical studio. These iterations would keep leading to dead ends. Material and labor costs were not going to decrease dramatically anytime soon so modernizing an antiquated system required a new digital and physical infrastructure working hand-in-hand to adapt to a wide range of. Our app was primarily thought of as the way that the community could connect and find opportunities, but it wasn't until we started with the digital experience and worked backwards that we could imagine the physical space
With my insights in hand I started translating them into a design solution that would:Provide users a tool to find new recipes with the ingredients they have.Display recipes in an intuitive way.Enable users to express themselves through customization.Knowing that users almost always search for recipes by their ingredients, I decided the main flow of the app would be an interactive quiz that asks what ingredients a user has or wants to use and then generates a list of recipes, using those ingredients, created by actual bartenders.My process was not as simple as creating a set of wireframes and never touching them again. I designed multiple versions of several solutions before landing on designs that felt right.
How to decrease the cost of a notoriously expensive and cumbersome industry started with adaptability. Material and labor costs were not going to decrease dramatically anytime soon so modernizing an antiquated system required a new digital and physical infrastructure working hand-in-hand to adapt to a wide range of If we could create a system the idea of a larger community to serve
I began to sketch out the most important features of the digital application that would run the entire system.
Improvements were made and hi-res screens were designed in Figma from feedback of wireframes and general ideas. Prototypes were also created to assist in testing abilities. PROTOTYPE COMING SOON
How to decrease the cost of a notoriously expensive and cumbersome industry started with adaptability. Material and labor costs were not going to decrease dramatically anytime soon so modernizing an antiquated system required a new digital and physical infrastructure working hand-in-hand to adapt to a wide range of If we could create a system the idea of a larger community to serve
Awaking on the other side of the post-digital-age music industry crash, a model built on excess and centralized around record labels was now incompatible with the very different limitations and demands that would greet them... at the very time that more musical content would be in demand than ever before
For the name, we would take inspiration from 2 systems developed to inspire unique creative connections, giving one-of-a-kind, somewhat randomized creative prompts meant to break writer’s block and keep the brain “on its toes”. A card with the phrase, "Abandon Normal Instruments" came up during an oblique strategies session and we knew this powerful phrase was going to be our own unique creative prompt to the users. The branding would also be consistent with these central ideas.
The logo would be a symbol that could not be immediately identifiable by the general public, something that you would have to be “in the know” to decipher – even devising our own unique alphabet.
The typography and color scheme were chosen to serve more of a museum-like philosophy of letting the "artworks" do the talking. Our users and their works would take center stage so our colors and fonts were mostly muted with only one bold featured color, Yves Kline blue. A blue hue was decided on for its calming qualities, but this specific tone was chosen to represent that it can also be incredibly bold and unique from its surroundings; a quality that all of our potential users seek for themselves.
The evolution of, and increased acceptance of, home recording abilities outpaced our ability to garner investment, property, etc. This was largely accelerated due to the effects of the Covid epidemic and had a large impact of investment appetite in brick-and-mortar business ventures. In hindsight, a digital first strategy that focused on connecting the community and harnessing their existing home setups may be a beneficial approach.
We found great opportunities to improve the professional environment for independent audio professional—such as automated contract implementation that would greatly decrease legal fees and designation of master/publishing shares—but without a more accessible and equitable production environment, all other goals were futile.
