LILLIAN JIA

Wood Street Social

Branding

creative direction. design. typography.

Wood Street Social (WSS) is a Toronto-based tropical EDM DJ. Branding this one was all about understanding the music, the vibe: beach, happy-go-lucky, free, infused with clean beats, meticulously engineered sounds, and carefully planned dynamics.

User

Since this is a branding project, my user is my client, the human behind Wood Street Social.

Research

User research was easy, I listened to every single track he had ever released. Since I’m also a musical person, I was able to grasp the vibe WSS style pretty fast. Other than stalking other DJ’s profiles on Soundcloud, my market research was mainly done on Google: what do the recognized EDM DJ’s logos look like; what about musician/band logos; and generally, what are some logos I think are clever and aesthetically pleasing? From all that, I created a visual road map, a moodboard if you will.

Sketching

This was the fun, and gruelling, process where I would sit down with the client and chat the thousands of thumbnail ideas I had for his brand. Even though conceptually all the ideas made sense, there were many disagreements on what we thought was visually appealing.

We eventually landed on the wave logomark: mathematically engineered to mimic the fluid motion of water. The wave logo mark is made up of the letters W, S, and S, stacked on top of each other in mathematical precision. The vibe of the whole brand is fluid, happy, and colourful (literally).

Wood Street Social typeface

From my market research, I found that many musicians or dj’s utilized a custom font for their logos. Design your own font? Heck yes, I’ll rise to that challenge! Following the same logic I used to create the logomark, I chopped away at the letterforms, leaving just enough for the eye to complete the letter, added in some of the diagonals that are so prominent in the wave logo, et voilà.

Branding across platforms

The rest of the brand follows the same vision: fun, free, expressive EDM.

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