Creative Direction, Designer
Universal Music Publishing Group
Brand Design • Style Guide • Print Design • Physical Goods • Editorial Design • Illustration
Universal Music Publishing Group
Brand Design • Style Guide • Print Design • Physical Goods • Editorial Design • Illustration
Universal Music Publishing Group has been a freelance client for over two years, bringing me on for specialty campaign work and internal creative projects. The work spans two very different design challenges: a full brand identity system for the Hip Hop 50 anniversary campaign, complete with trading cards, a cassette mixtape sleeve, and a style guide and an editorial zine and poster celebrating Neil Diamond's catalog and legacy. Same client, completely different creative worlds.
The Hip Hop 50 identity was rooted in the culture's origins, hand-rendered letterforms with a distressed, stencil-like texture that references graffiti and street art without being literal. The logo system was built for flexibility across print, digital, and physical goods, with primary, stacked, and horizontal lockups and color rules that applied consistently across the full campaign.
The trading card set brought the Hip Hop 50 brand into a physical collectible, one card per letter of the alphabet, each featuring a UMPG artist and their most iconic song. The system adapted the campaign's distressed aesthetic to a format referencing both sports trading cards and vinyl record sleeves, with a front/back design that worked as a self-contained storytelling piece for each artist.
A companion piece to the trading cards, a mixtape featuring 14 tracks from UMPG's hip hop catalog, packaged in a custom cassette sleeve. The hand-lettered "Alphabet Soup" logotype was designed specifically for the sleeve, referencing classic hip hop typography while staying rooted in the campaign's distressed vintage aesthetic. A mixtape for the 50th anniversary of hip hop felt like the only right format.
A foldable zine and poster created for UMPG's internal promotional use, celebrating Neil Diamond's six-decade career and catalog. The design required a completely different sensibility from the Hip Hop 50 campaign: warm, editorial, and era-appropriate, with a script logotype, mixed typography, and an infographic interior that distilled Diamond's legacy into a shareable, collectible format.
The Hip Hop 50 campaign gave UMPG a cohesive brand presence across a landmark cultural anniversary from social content to physical collectibles distributed to industry partners. The ongoing relationship has extended across genres and formats, from hip hop campaign branding to artist editorial design, demonstrating a creative partnership built on range and trust.