Exhale, the techno label, events and merchandise brand founded by Amelie Lens, was growing and looking for a designer to carry one visual story across all three. In February 2024 it invited Studio Studio to pitch.
The proposal turns the sensory environment of a club into a procedural graphic system. We decided not to use atmospheric imagery. A raster tool does that work: typography passes through one digital constraint that breaks standard letterforms into shifting pixel patterns, the breathing, mist and dense smoke of a techno night. Against these dissolving layers sits a second, highly legible typeface, so that raw texture and clear communication share the same surface.
The framework was built for live events and digital promotion, and it is kinetic by design. The rasterised text is a rhythmic system that runs on its own as continuous animation; a still is one frame of it. The tool worked. Every raster in the pitch was generated with it.
The brief asked for three visuals in ten days: event promotion for Exhale Berlin, cover art for an Exhale Records compilation and a T-shirt. We delivered all three, plus animated versions.
The tool was made so that Exhale’s own team could have generated new event visuals from it without us.
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Exhale by Amelie Lens
Invited pitch, 2024
