Many brands find it hard to choose the right typography. A big issue is how to express a wide range of offerings with a single typeface. That’s the challenge Spotify recently faced with its enormous collection of musical tracks representing very different genres. Within a project on a typography update, the audio service’s in-house design team and designers from the Berlin, Germany-based foundry Dinamo Typeface tried to reimagine Spotify’s identity in a single font.
Initially, it was a truly tough task. After going through a whole lot of vintage and modern music posters, designers failed to elaborate any idea about a certain style. So they abandoned graphic art and turned their eyes and ears to music itself, and in particular to the mashup culture.
This genre built on blending songs, tracks, and styles gave inspiration to a mixture of typographic styles named Spotify Mix, which is applied to the Spotify logo as well as texts on the website. Currently being implemented across the brand’s assets, Spotify Mix replaces Circular, a geometric sans-serif typeface. Now, it will be the service’s main font, supporting all Latin-based scripts, including some Asian languages, like Indonesian or Vietnamese.
Stylistically, Spotify Mix combines classic and modern forms. This can be seen in the Grotesk-like angles and sleek and curved lines with some humanist vibe. In addition, the design was influenced by sound waves visualized to echo rhythms and beats of musical compositions. According to Dinamo Typefaces, they encoded that music-inspired mood in forms, like the opening in the “a,” “d,” and “e,” as well as the solid triangular part in the cross of the “t.”
Explaining this typographic facelift, Spotify says that its previous corporate font was rather insufficient to express the music versatility available at the service, and this is what Spotify should convey. Actually, the entire font family looks quite unconventional, especially the Italics.
Spotify’s brand design director Rasmus Wängelin commented on the redesign, saying that the brand has become more free by breaking with traditional typography. The service now speaks more clearly of its individuality through a “variety of font styles.”
Spotify positions itself as a place for creative people to show their talents. This concept now gets a clearly articulated embodiment, as a range of the platform’s features, including playlists, promo campaigns, and other things, will be designed with the use of Spotify Mix. And this will certainly brighten the Spotify community, reflecting its unique vibrancy.
