FM
MUSIC | 2023
A brand identity rooted in Manchester's musical DNA.
Introduction
Growing up going to gigs in Manchester changes how you understand music. Here it isn't background — it's infrastructure, community, something that gets passed down through venues and record shops and the particular energy of a city that has always taken sound seriously. When James approached this studio to build the identity for FM Audio and Sound Production, it felt less like a brief and more like an opportunity to put something back into a place that had given a great deal. Music branding in a city with this history carries weight. It asks you to know what you're referencing and why.
Growing up going to gigs in Manchester changes how you understand music. Here it isn't background — it's infrastructure, community, something that gets passed down through venues and record shops and the particular energy of a city that has always taken sound seriously. When James approached this studio to build the identity for FM Audio and Sound Production, it felt less like a brief and more like an opportunity to put something back into a place that had given a great deal. Music branding in a city with this history carries weight. It asks you to know what you're referencing and why.
Services
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Printed Ephemera
Bespoke Logotype
Brand Identity and Direction
Printed Ephemera
The Challenge
The challenge was honouring a genuinely rich legacy — Factory Records, the Haçienda, a city that built an entire aesthetic around the relationship between sound and image — without being nostalgic about it. Nostalgia is the wrong register for a working studio. James' practice spans genres and contexts, from intimate acoustic production to large-scale live sound. The identity needed to hold that range without becoming generic, to feel of Manchester without becoming a mood board of its own mythology.
The Solution
FM radio waves became the visual foundation — but not as literal illustration, rather as a starting point for mark-making. Motifs were created with ink, vectorised, then translated into 3D motion graphics, giving the system energy and physicality that a purely static identity couldn't carry. Sound is movement; the identity needed to move too.
A custom monogram anchors the system, while bespoke gradients allow the palette to shift across genres without losing coherence. The result is a music brand identity that feels genuinely of its city — specific, adaptable, and built to move. Not a tribute to what Manchester made, but a continuation of what it keeps making.
The challenge was honouring a genuinely rich legacy — Factory Records, the Haçienda, a city that built an entire aesthetic around the relationship between sound and image — without being nostalgic about it. Nostalgia is the wrong register for a working studio. James' practice spans genres and contexts, from intimate acoustic production to large-scale live sound. The identity needed to hold that range without becoming generic, to feel of Manchester without becoming a mood board of its own mythology.
The Solution
FM radio waves became the visual foundation — but not as literal illustration, rather as a starting point for mark-making. Motifs were created with ink, vectorised, then translated into 3D motion graphics, giving the system energy and physicality that a purely static identity couldn't carry. Sound is movement; the identity needed to move too.
A custom monogram anchors the system, while bespoke gradients allow the palette to shift across genres without losing coherence. The result is a music brand identity that feels genuinely of its city — specific, adaptable, and built to move. Not a tribute to what Manchester made, but a continuation of what it keeps making.
