Parasol Sound (3/2019- Present)

Parasol Sound is an underground electronic music series by the talented Omar Ahmad, whose artist name is Twin Primes. Twin Primes represents the human desire for individuality and connectedness, while grappling with both forces being at odds with one another. Omar reached out to me wanting a creative director that could help him envision a whole world for this new brand. We needed labels, logo, posters, a theme and more. I was lucky enough that Omar gave me a lot of creative freedom while also collaborating and giving essential input when needed. The parasol world needed to represent the dark warehouse techno scene of New York City. It needed to be a visualization of an after-hours world of electronic music. A world of digital soundscapes and dimmed lights, very mechanical but yet organic. For this reason, I decided that fractals and algorithms could be the perfect pillars to construct such a world. Fractals are everywhere in nature and yet they also often feel “alien” and mechanical to the eye. I decided to formulate an interesting mix of generative fractal-based shapes and then place them in natural looking environments. The process involved creating 3d fractals in one program and later exporting the mesh to then recreate them as 3d shapes that could be used for flyers, 3d printing, sculpting, illustrations and so on. The whole idea was to have something that could be scalable and used in more than just a poster. To give these shapes a lifelike entity, making them feel like digital “totems” or ancient relics and eventually come to life as real life 3d printed objects.

Logo

Creating the logo was perhaps the hardest part. We wanted to convey this feeling of “para” shield, “sol” sun. A dark place where the light doesn’t pass through, but at the same time playing with the word parasol as we know it, the familiar umbrella used to shade from the sun. The image is a top view of a stylized umbrella with one of the fractal “beings” in the front and the name of the label clearly visible. The logo needed to be flexible with many different potential color schemes and writings depending on which flyer or merchandize it would be used on.

Shapes

All these shapes were created in a specialized 3d fractal program. I decided to create the fractals based on the image data gathered from one of the drawings made by Omar (picture 3 of this slide). I mostly took the texture and depth data of the drawing and then used it as a displacement map for the fractals. I later altered the formulas to get different shapes all from that same drawing. It was a unique and creative method of mixing part of what Omar wanted but re-envisioning it in a completely new way.

Scenes

The scenes were the final rendition of the concepts. I exported the fractals and edited them inside a 3d software and created the scenes from scratch. These are fully rendered 3d environments that can be animated, changed and re designed according to the type of event or season or occasion it needs to be used for. For example you can see the first and second picture are the same 3d fractal shape rendered in two different environments I created. This was the idea of the fractal shapes, to be used in a modular way for different purposes. We are planning to eventually 3d print them as well and use them for live shows and installations.