CLIENT
New Standards

YEAR
2022–Present

ROLES
Art Direction
Identity


New Standards is a weekly music series that fosters community and creates space for musicians, artists, and listeners to imagine. New Standards is creative, improvised music, and community, every Wednesday night at The Common in Edmonton.


Naming
The name New Standards was inspired by a desire to honour jazz tradition, while pushing the modern envelope.

New refers to an expansion beyond what is known and understood within contemporary music: encouraging a sense of experimentation and an embracing of eclecticism. Standards refers to a jazz standard –– a compilation of tried and true tunes that have remained in the repertoire of players since the emergence of the genre.

When put together, New Standards communicates the significance of pushing boundaries while staying true to the aesthetics and language within the jazz tradition.  



Identity
Imitating the dynamic nature of improvised music, New Standards logomark is designed to be rearranged. As improvised music changes shape freely from one musical passage to the next, the same flexibility is present within our visual identity.

Taking cues from classic New York subway signage, the identity uses two common symbols and sans-serif typography to express our mission. New Standards is forward-thinking, yet familiar. New Standards is moving upwards, yet grounded in tradition.













*This is a project in collaboration with Biboye Onanuga, Gareth Gilliland and Sean Croal, the dudes who make up the New Standards House Band.

CLIENT
Ellen Doty

YEAR
2024

ROLES
Art Direction
Illustration
Album Design
Merch



Storyboarding, illustration and graphic design for Ellen Doty’s third studio album, Every Little Scene. I developed six original illustrations for use across single artwork, vinyl and CD packaging, poster design, promotional assets, and merch, each bringing a different part of Ellen’s world to life.

To reflect the nostalgic, contemplative softness of the record, I pitched Ellen on a unique take on merch. We teamed up with MilkJar Candle Co. to release branded candles in MilkJar’s signature Hygge scent. Perfect to burn while the record’s spinning.







CLIENT
Social Eyes

YEAR 
2022

ROLES
Art Direction
Identity
Album Design
Photography



Drawing influence from house music, folk tradition, and 20th-century jazz, ‘Social Eyes’ is an eclectic collage of sound and voice. Written and produced by Gareth Gilliland during an isolated first year of the pandemic, Social Eyes is a clever wordplay on ‘socalize’.

Our approach to image-making for this EP centred around experimentation, abstraction and play. Much like the EP, the identity exudes vibrance, colour, distortion, and strange beauty.

I created each piece of the identity using mixed mediums, including; traditional collage, print-making, oil painting, digital photography, and of course, that modern day computer-touch.




CLIENT
Olivia Menard


YEAR
2024

SERVICES
Branding

Web Design Copywriting


Olivia Menard wears many hats. As an Edmonton-based artist, composer, trombonist, educator, and leader within her community –– among many other things, Olivia approached me looking for a way to showcase her many talents, projects and offerings. 

My design approach to this project began by understanding what made Olivia, Olivia, and how we could communicate her fun and lively self through color, pattern, design, and clever copy.

Olivia is colorful, playful, and a little silly; she’s dedicated to her work, but doesn’t take herself too seriously. The visual identity needed to convey how community-oriented, personable, caring, and passionate she is about teaching others the joy she’s found in music.

The visual identity I developed is playful, smart, clean, punchy, and branded under the geniusly chosen moniker, Trombolivia.

Taking on an additional favorite role of mine, I assisted in some crafting some cheeky, conversational copy throughout her website to further the tone of the branding we developed.













CLIENT
Personal

YEAR
2020

ROLES
Animation Illustration

Toon is my personal, visual exploration of producer and composer Chris Hyson’s single, Toon. As a big fan of Hyson’s projects, I was particularly struck by this track and its strange use of sampling and repetition. Stealing soundbites from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, Hyson describes his tune as a way to explore “constructing narratives with the use of dissonance; bringing together various unrelated samples in a way that they still found harmony when collected together.”

The visuals were interested in doing the same: I wanted to provide an almost-dreamlike, offbeat, strange meshing of typographic expression, color and characters set in motion. Drawing reference from Toon’s teaser video, the animations I created are appropriated from existing cartoons, including “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”.




Credits

Sometimes I like to cut and paste existing material to generate my own, new stuff––sort of like Hyson’s sampling. In this video, I borrowed this clip from Videezy, and appropriated existing cartoon characters to make my own animations.
maaikelynn@gmail.com
Edmonton, AB