I was asked to make a logo for a new record label that would convey the nature of the music the owner intended to release. He wanted a logo with a dark, technical feel, that could express the percussive animation of his chosen musical genres, yet which wasn’t cold or stern. I started with Futuremark, a gorgeous font from the now defunct type vendor MindCandy. It had a pleasing retro-futurist feel, situating the logo in the visual context of TDR and Buro Destruct’s work around the turn of the millennium. I overlaid circles onto certain corners of the composed type, which served to soften some of the harshness of the typeface, and emphasised the more playful aspects of the glyphs. I used a tightly tracked Helvetica as the secondary typeface. This, along with the superfluous, and slightly silly trademark symbol, provided another visual reference to millennial mock-corporatism, and served to further emphasise its playful aspects. The rounded neo-grotesque forms of the lower case provided a friendlier, rounded counterpart to Futuremark, and echoed the circular devices I’d added earlier. I’ve always loved Din’s quotation marks, and used here they added a kinetic urgency to the logo, without breaking with the angular geometry of the overall composition. I then created a number of possible variants for usage in different contexts, showing that the same forms could speak with significantly differing voices, though remain recognisable, depending on simple alterations in treatment.