When the founder of NDVDLS (read: Individuals) came to me, he had stars in his eyes. Let’s call him G for short. I immediately felt a great sense of difference & taste from him. He sought to develop a visceral identity to convey visionary techno’s raw power, almost like a visual representation of an altered state. Something with the power of a 909 kick, the mystery of atmospheric synths & the expressive motion of bodies on the dance floor.

Inspired by Eastern philosophies, G saw sound as sacred architecture, shaping spaces in which to reveal the inner spaciousness of the mindbody & generate peak human experiences. Vibration as the very material of the universe; a tool for awakening. 

G curated artists blending techno with gritty ambient, downtempo & experimental forms, united by sonic craftsmanship.

NDVDLS sought to elevate their gatherings into a form of contemporary ritual: grounded in the primitive power of rhythmic repetition & visions of ancestors dancing to tribal drums—yet elevated by a code of contemporary aesthetics & sonic storytelling.

Something primal, yet grounded in the austere visual language of techno and its cavernous concrete spaces. The result was to feel raw yet universal, akin to an esoteric sigil; an invitation to another state of consciousness.

For the NDVDLS signature, I went off the beaten track, instinctively reached for paint. Knowing brushstrokes reveal a human hand in ways that vectors simply can’t: adding life through texture, expressiveness & the surrender of control.

I combined brushstrokes with finger painting, pushing the paint intuitively while channelling something spontaneous, charged & rhythmic. I made a few dozen of each letter, then combined the best ones into the final result. 

I was concerned about the scalability of a raster logo, but scanning the large letters at 1200dpi easily gave us billboard-level resolution, so that was covered. Then the question of small sizes or viewing from afar. This tested fine too; the details fade away, but the bold strokes punch through. Instantly recognizable. All good. 

That said, the real magic happens up close. As you zoom in, each letter begins to feel like a collection of entities; a thousand stories of touch & movement dancing with each other to form the whole. Individuals within a collective.

Beyond a certain threshold, the letters disappear, and an abstract painting emerges, offering experiences on several levels of analysis.

The presymbolic self can explore a hedonic collection of gestures & textures, sometimes experiencing the kinesthetic energies of pushing, pulling, scraping & splashing as a felt sense. 

Conversely, the subconscious mind offers up interpretations within the chaos, seeing faces, objects & animals emerge from the interplay of positive & negative space. Like an asymmetrical Rorschach test, it conjures entities from thin air. Paint trails turn into a map of movements on a dancefloor.

To the synaesthetic, textures turn into timbre, embodying sonic characters: fine dots populate space like sine blips; scrapes break apart as if run through distortion; bold strokes assert their presence like the rumbling bass of a Moog Minotaur. 

Supporting collateral was designed with intentional restraint. Helvetica. Messaging is sparse and coded; a necessary gatekeeping mechanism to protect the clandestine gatherings against raids.

Together, cryptic copy & a polarizing aesthetic help to cultivate a sense of mystery that sparks curiosity for members of the techno scene while remaining opaque to outsiders.