Work Kyma Records
Kyma Records, 2025
A label that sounds like its records
- Sector
- Music
- What we did
- Identity, motion, sleeve system
- Where
- Thessaloniki, pressed in Germany
- How long
- 12 weeks, then a retainer
A sleeve system for an independent label that releases forty records a year and has no art budget for any of them.
40releases a year, one recognisable system
The brief
Kyma's artists were making their own covers, which meant forty releases a year that looked like forty different labels. Nobody could recognise a Kyma record in a shop or a feed.
The real problem
A label with no art budget and forty releases a year needs a system that designs covers without a designer.
What we did
We built a generator instead of a template. Each release's waveform drives the wave bands on its sleeve, so no two covers are alike and every one is recognisably Kyma. Artists choose from three palettes and can override anything. The same system animates for social posts and for the label's live visuals.
What we made
On the wall
We tried hand-drawn directions first. The waveform won because the label can run it without us.
Every Friday at four, each project in progress is pinned up at real size. Why we print it
What changed
Every release since March has used the system, and three artists have asked to use it for their own tour posters. The label's streaming profile now reads as one catalogue instead of forty strangers.
Forty records a year and every one of them finally looks like it came from the same place.