London house heavyweight George Fitzgerald and Mixcloud founder Nikhil Shah launched the ManMakeMusic record label in late 2010, uniting a small cluster of the producers DJs and artists in London and Berlin. The labels signature sound – stripped down, unapologetic, raw and timeless house cuts – would need to be reflected in the physical releases, a task that fell to me when George and Nikhil appointed me Creative Director of the label.
A pure monochrome palette suited the label’s stark sound but also their print budget; resourceful use of that QR code design meant that the same ‘Disco Sleeve’ could be utilised for the first three releases, with the Inner Labels of the vinyl completing the code. The codes led to the discography page of the ManMakeMusic site. I’m not sure if anyone actually ever scanned theirs.
The labels distinctive “shards” logo first started off as a marriage of an extremely stylised typographic rendition of both “MAN” and “MMM” – in its horizontal format the ghost outlines of these phrases are still visible. It can be implemented either horizontally or vertically, and appears in both formats on the releases.
The label identity was completed with a bespoke typeface; J.Smith. The face takes as its inspiration the little known typographic sketches of Percy J. Smith, a contemporary of Edward Johnston, who explored similar type forms to those that would eventually become Johnston’s seminal London Transport typeface, P22. J.Smith was designed with a simple sensation in mind that seemed to match ManMakeMusic’s particular ethos and aesthetic; London, but colder.