Case Study · 2022–2024 · Creative Lead

Designing the identity of a growing independent music scene.

Local shows, turned into something that felt like a place. Fifty plus nights, dozens of artists, a visual world I built from scratch.

Dugout started as a group of friends who wanted to put on shows. None of us had done this before. We knew the artists we wanted to platform and the kind of nights we wanted to create, and we figured out the rest as we went.

I was a founding member and the creative lead. If it had Dugout's name on it, I probably made it. The logo, the posters, the social presence, the promo videos.

Dugout show poster — High June at Cat's Cradle

01 / 09

Problem

Most local shows are invisible.

Someone makes a flyer, posts it once, hopes the right people see it. Great lineups disappear into crowded feeds, and every event starts from zero.

"We weren't trying to be a promoter. We wanted to be a place people came back to." Founding principle

02 / 09

Strategy

A visual world, not a flyer.

We weren't competing with Spotify. We were building a room, a night, a feeling you couldn't get from a screen.

Three things mattered most to me:

Make it recognizable

Every poster looked different, but they all felt like Dugout. Heavy grain, layered textures, distressed type, bold compositions. The artist's name always came first. The design stayed out of the way of the music.

Make it feel like a community

Each show should feel like the next chapter, not a random event. We wanted people to recognize familiar faces, bring friends, feel like they were part of something that was growing. Not just attending a concert.

Belong in the culture

We played venues with real history. The visuals had to hold their own on those walls, next to flyers from other collectives, in Instagram stories, handed out at the door. We weren't just promoting shows. We were participating in a scene.

05 / 09

Output · the poster system

Event poster system.

Fifteen shows, fifteen posters. All different, all unmistakably Dugout.

Dugout show poster — Last 2 Leave at Devine's

Dugout show poster — Jam the Fruit (alternate)

A selection of Dugout show posters.

03 / 09

Logo · digging up the hidden gems of music

Designing the Dugout logo.

Our tagline was "digging up the hidden gems of music." The logo had to connect to that, and feel worn in, like it had already been around a while.

I explored three directions, each pulling from a different part of the tagline.

Early directions: the gem, the shovel, and the record.

Concept 01

The Gem

A diamond referencing "hidden gems," set inside a distressed circular badge with script lettering. Had the vintage feel we wanted but leaned more illustrative than we needed.

Concept 02

The Shovel

A bold wordmark with a shovel replacing the "T." A direct nod to "digging." Cleaner and more graphic, but it lost some of the warmth and got hard to read at small sizes.

Concept 03 · final

The Record

A vinyl record with retro script on top. This one clicked immediately. It said "music" without explanation and had a natural, tactile quality that felt right for who we were.

Chosen direction

The record also worked the best in practice. We needed something simple enough to print cheaply, stamp onto things, and throw into any social post or poster without it fighting the layout. The record gave us all of that.

The final mark — simple enough for a sticker, recognizable enough for a venue wall.

04 / 09

Identity · the look & feel

Made by someone who cares.

Old gig posters. Zine layouts. Record sleeves. The kind of flyer you find stapled to a telephone pole and immediately want to know more about.

I spent a lot of time looking at old gig posters, zine layouts, and record sleeves. Not to copy them, but to figure out why they felt so alive. There's something about a photocopied flyer with heavy ink and rough edges that just signals "this was made by someone who cares."

In practice that meant: heavy grain on everything, type that felt like it had been through a few generations of printing, collage compositions, high contrast so the posters could cut through a feed. Textures pulled from scanned paper, old photographs, and analog processes wherever I could find them.

The one rule I never broke: the artist's name is always the biggest thing on the poster. Dugout existed to platform musicians, not itself.

06 / 09

Discovery · the campaign rhythm

Designing for discovery.

Most collectives post once and hope for the best. We treated every show like a small campaign.

Every show followed the same rhythm: announce the lineup, drop the poster, build momentum through the week, push hard on the day of.

We also started filming for the artists. Sets, separate acoustic sessions, short clips for social. Not just to promote Dugout. The artists walked away with something they could use too.

A private session we filmed for Madeleine ahead of her set. She walked away with footage she could use too.

07 / 09

Community · how it grew

Growing the community.

At some point it stopped being just our friends in the crowd. That's when it felt real.

People started showing up because they'd seen the posters, or someone shared a clip, or they'd been to a Dugout show before and wanted to come back.

Artists started reaching out to us instead of the other way around. They recognized the visual style and wanted to be part of it. We never planned that. It just happened because we were consistent and we cared about how we presented the people we worked with.

50+

Live shows

Over time, Dugout hosted more than 50 live shows and worked with dozens of emerging artists across the local scene.

The thing I'm proudest of isn't a specific poster or a follower count. It's that we built something people felt connected to. Regulars who kept coming back. Artists who became friends. A room full of strangers who were all there for the same reason.

A year of nights, cut together — the rooms, the artists, the regulars who kept showing up.

08 / 09

Reflection · what it taught me

Designing for trust.

When you're designing for a cultural community — not users, not customers — the work stops being about deliverables.

Dugout taught me something product work alone couldn't. When you're designing for a community — not users, not customers — the work becomes about trust.

Can an artist trust that you'll represent them well? Can an audience trust that if they see your name, the night will be worth it? Can the people around you trust that you care as much about the thing as they do?

That's what I think about when I think about Dugout. Not the posters or the logo or the follower count. The fact that we made something real, with our hands, and people showed up for it.

"It's the project that made me realize design doesn't have to live on a screen to matter." — Personal note

01

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