Studio Gruhl’s identity for techno label Spellbound is really a canvas primed to grow and change

When Studio Gruhl was invited to design the identity for the young female-led techno label Spellbound, they realised they had a lot of room to play. As Creative Director Malte Gruhl puts it, younger brands are always fun to work with; there are fewer corporate hoops to jump through and there’s also an appetite for bending the traditional rules of branding, allowing designers to crack something truly unique and fresh. And that’s exactly how things turned out for Studio Gruhl and Spellbound – the final identity is chockablock with character; it asks for your attention and stamps its presence.

“What we did for Spellbound was create a kind of canvas – an underlying grid that, together with the colour palette, typeface, and logo, can work by itself or extend with 2D and 3D illustrations for stills and motion assets. A bit like a volume scale – Spellbound can turn up the volume by adding more and more elements on the canvas or be more restrained and direct if needed,” says Gruhl. The studio achieved this by creating an underlying framework which they then treated as a base for a collage, overlaying 2D shapes, cut-outs swathed in gradients and rugged 3D forms. A lot of this was inspired by the early techno scenes in Berlin from the 1990s.

“It was key for us to represent DJ Shaleen’s vinyl-only sets. We did this by going back in time to when this was the standard in the early days of Berlin techno,” Gruhl tells us. “From this, we took our visual cues – whether it’s raw, brutal 3D elements inspired by digital art and VJ sets before the internet, or a slightly off-colour palette, everything traces back to the ’90s when techno played in abandoned houses or empty factory buildings.”

While the wordmark and the design system create the bones of the canvas, the content is the artwork that fills it. To create it, the team fleshed out three conceptual brand pillars – ‘Attitude of Berlin,’ ‘Traces of Berlin,’ and ‘Colours of the City.’ “Everything should feel very direct and raw but be fully adaptable – a bit like a collage. For example, for ‘Traces of Berlin,’ we scanned in ripped posters and textures we found on the streets, then rebuilt them in 3D or used them as visual overlays across the artwork,” Gruhl explains. “We transferred this analogue heritage into the digital world in which we like to operate and, at the same time, generated over 50 different assets for the brand launch.”

Everything was built to be elastic and expandable. The collage system itself is flexible, and lends itself effortlessly to constant iteration. The studio ensured that using the framework, Spellbound can adapt layouts, mix different assets from various designers, create diverse expressions, and build on the system on its own.

“The asset library is fully expandable, and this was one of our key hopes for the project. The overall brand identity should invite growth and change. What we made informs how the brand can look but also invites other designers or artists to make it their own and let it grow,” says Gruhl. “We are super happy with how we set the stage but are equally excited to see where the brand goes from here and how it will grow and adapt over time. In an ideal setup, Spellbound will have an ever-growing library of assets and individual reinterpretations of the brand pillars that they can review and grow with over time.”

To hold this active, expressive design system together, the team created a custom wordmark which needed to be robust and “create a certain visual urgency.” Considering the environment for music labels, Studio Gruhl established that it worked across multiple touchpoints – from co-branding environments to smaller spaces. The strong, polished mark does all that, and becomes an anchor in the larger design system, ensuring a sense of continuity as the rest of the canvas around it changes.

For the overarching brand, Gruhl says, they opted for open-source typefaces Anton and Nimbus Sans L, so “it would be easier for Spellbound to collaborate with other designers and artists in the future. When working with emerging brands, we prioritise simplicity and ease of use in accessing and utilising the brand assets we provide.”