Echotourist Case Study

Echotourist was established in 2010 in Novosibirsk by a group of passionate music producers. 2020 marked the label's 10 year anniversary. Over the course of these years the community grew in both numbers and culture. So it was expected the values of the label and its maturity to be manifested into a cohesive visual language.

The logo is a cyrillic letter "Э" that shoots the word mark out of it's head boom! But for real the unusual composition of the simplistic parts this logo is what makes it unique.

The Challenge

The general challenge was basically to capture the label in its current state. By that time they were long time clear where they are going musically.
Though visually they were no longer comfortable with spontaneity and demanded some comprehensive way to do things. A visual idea that would align the label’s values with its visuals. And that would not interfere, substitute or block creative flexibility of the label’s contributors.

My play was to see Echotourist as a meta-character. An entity that is in a state of perpetual travel sending you postcards and stuff. Despite the character is made up, we apply it to actual reality as an optical tool like a lens or a prism.
The echo element of it is conveyed through repetition and reflection, highlighting its derivative nature to the source. And the meta-travel element can be delivered via photography and so-called “nostalgia for nonexistent experiences."

at some point it became somewhat of a role play. Imagining myself an echotourist I collected random photos of posters, and videos of reflective surfaces

(ECH011) Ten Years of Echotourism

To celebrate the label's anniversary with the music compilation "Ten Years of Echotourism," I wanted to offer a special treat to the label's fans. Thus, I curated a bundle that consisted of a cassette, a pair of postcards, and stickers neatly packaged in an envelope. For this project, I sourced images from several amateur photographers based in Amersfoort, Limassol, and Novosibirsk. The directive was to capture photographs with a simple composition, maintaining a 1:1 ratio, where the focal point was the very composition itself.

The cassettes and the postcards were packed in a serious-looking envelope made of thick rough grey paper.

We PICKED visuals for each track of the compilation. And 14 postcards designs were made accordingly. The we randomly dropped 2 or 3 postcards into each package so they ended up to be somewhat unique.

Echotourist · Ten Years of Echotourism

Besides making a cohesive set of unique covers the multitude of photographs served another purpose. It enabled us to promote the release for several days in social media as if it was a big deal. Because it indeed was.

(ECH013) Purple Uncle — Onyx

So, Purple Uncle said: "I bought myself a piece of music hardware called Onyx and made some beats. Also Onyx is a kinda stripy stone". That was the input to work with. After several attempts to approach the task I cut pebble shapes out of some Norwegian magazine, scattered it randomly and sent a photo to the artist. PU said: "Yes, that's exactly how the record was made—random pieces scattered."

Tere were 10 unique designs for the cover made and produced to support the idea of randomness

And there also a multitude of postcard designs were pinted

Echotourist · Пурпурный Дядя - Onyx

For the release promotion I chopped my favourite bits of the record and illustrated them with short videos. They are the same paper pebbles filmed through an IKEA shot glass I found in my Airbnb in Istanbul.

(ECH014) Air Krew— Loss Reward

This was an improv-like piece recorded by a group of musicians in village Dubki. The contributors of Air Krew already had a developed style of designing their record covers so I decided to create something that would bring their style and the current style of Echotourist label together. The visual idea was taken from the name of the record — lost pets posters. I attempted to put it dumb and natural writing the name in all caps Arial Bold font.

The tape was recorded in summer in European forest. I really wanted to illustrate the record with something connected wild nature observation filmed in low-res. But since it was winter and I was travelling across South Turkey, and Georgia I decided to film all kinds of bodies of water as they are quite similar everywhere.

The postcards layouts ended up to be properly dumb and natural as initially intended

Such artistic exercises made me realise that sometimes it is totally okay to work intuitively as quite often your rational mind is far not enough to achieve the goal

Echotourist · AIR Krew - LOSS REWARD (sampler)

At some point I was so involved in this project I decided to make a full 30 minute video for the record. For no particular reason. Though we used the chops of this video for the release promotion.

Echolocation

Echotourist and CC19 ran series of events called Echolocation. The general idea was to play selected demo records of amateur talents to general public. It started in 2019 as series of irl music events and in 2020 changed to regular youtube broadcasts due to global pandemic.

The activity required mostly digital promotion imagery. Social media posts and stories, event pages headers. Also some supporting images like title screens for streaming media. So it was a great opportunity for the Echotourist visual style to unfold.

I applied a simple and accessible abstract photography style for the events covers. I made the first batch of photos and offered all the label members to contribute

It was just a still title screen on letting people listen to the music with no distraction

this one is one of the 'stand by' screens

most of the layouts were based on the good old xx century approach to negative space, though without being too uptight I just picked a random harmonic proportion ratio each time. because why not

Visual ID and Releases Design for an Indie Electronic Music Label

The Challenge

(ECH011) Ten Years of Echotourism

(ECH013) Purple Uncle — Onyx

(ECH014) Air Krew— Loss Reward

Echolocation