Selected Work from DROP
Proton
For the past decade, DROP principal Ben Mautner has provided Creative Direction for all aspects of Proton, including branding, marketing, interface design, client communications, and the brands and album covers for all of Proton’s in-house labels. Ben also serves as community ombudsman.
Proton Radio is one of the most widely-known and well-respected dance music streaming services on the internet, home to hundreds of original shows from hundreds of world-class DJs.
Kidolences
Designed by DROP, the Kidolences brand identity and packaging work to convey a warm, personal feeling that eschews sadness and instead focuses on the joy of life and a path toward a brighter future.
Kidolences offers custom comfort boxes for children going through hard times, whether caused by the death of a loved one, a parent’s military deployment, a change of living arrangement, or other emotional challenge. Every item is carefully selected by Kidolences’ founder, a child psychologist specializing in trauma and recovery.
Cannabis Pairing
DROP designed and developed the brand identity and products for Cannabis Pairing utilizing a palette of 64 bright colors in the logo and across the brand to stand out in the ever-crowded cannabis market. The trading cards are information-forward while emphasizing the tantalizing visuals of each pairing.
Cannabis Pairing is a San Francisco-based startup introducing people to combining different strains of cannabis with foods, wines, locations and experiences.
SoundSystem
DROP principal Ben Mautner designed every aspect of the SoundSystem user interface used by tens of thousands of artists to keep track of their music catalogs, their releases, their relationships, and more than one million licenses and contracts.
SoundSystem by Proton is how more than 1,400 electronic music record labels manage and distribute their releases.
Particles
DROP designed the Particles identity based on the double-slit experiment in physics, a fundamental test that shows when a single stream of particles is propelled through two slots, the competing wave patterns result in bands of particles with space between. Every season, DROP designs a new cover style for Particles inspired by the principles and patterns of physics.
Particles is an wildly influential progressive house record label with a decade-long legacy and hundreds of releases.
MTV VMAs
As a huge fan of both Miley Cyrus and MTV, when DROP principal Ben Mautner was given the chance to design street ads and digital billboards for the VMAs, he went all out, incorporating as many visuals from Miley’s style and her favorite things as possible, then digitally collaging them into a wild, jarring, psychedelic series that seizes the viewer’s attention and makes their eyes bleed a little.
The MTV Video Music Awards in 2015 featured Miley Cyrus as the host.
Cirque Du Freak
DROP principal Ben Mautner designed the identity and books for the Cirque Du Freak series of 12 titles, and art directed illustrator Sam Weber to create unique, spooky, mesmerizing covers that evoke the excitement and horror in the books.
Cirque Du Freak is a bestselling teen horror book series by author Darren Shan.
Neosensory
DROP created a brand identity for NeoSensory that is sleek and authoritative and oozing tech. The icon is a pair of curvy lines that the human brain understands to be the word “Neo,” while the no-nonsense wordmark conveys to the target audience that NeoSensory is a trustworthy company.
NeoSensory is a company founded by acclaimed scientist David Eagleman that develops products that translate sound and other information into tactile, vibrating sensations felt on the skin that the brain adapts to understand.
Decibels
DROP designed a sleek, curvaceous icon for Decibels fit for the electronic music world it inhabits, and paired it with a bold color scheme and information-packed social media posts including prominent artist images to grab the eye and appeal to dance music fans on the forefront of cultural trends.
Decibels is a forward-thinking dance music radio show broadcast in various forms since 1999.
Kodi Media Center Interface
DROP was given an opportunity to design a custom interface for the Kodi media center. The main priorities were to be big-graphics-forward, easy to understand, get where you need to go in 3 clicks, and have text big enough to read. It also needed to look future-proof, so the interface uses the timeless Helvetica for all text on screen.
Kodi is a media center used on TVs to watch movies, listen to music, watch TV and much more.
The Swing Heritage Orchestra
Cincinnati’s glorious Art Deco architecture inspired every aspect of the brand identities DROP developed for both the Swing Heritage Orchestra and Masterworks. The promotional posters posted around the city mimic architectural elements found in Cincinnati's famous Union Terminal train station.
Hank Mautner and the Swing Heritage Orchestra and the Masterworks Jazz Orchestra, both groups of more than a dozen legendary jazz musicians playing hard-to-find masterpieces from the ages, needed strong identities and promotional materials to stand out in the historically jazz-rich city of Cincinnati.
Balkan Connection
DROP designed a modular 2.5D icon for Balkan Connection that can be twisted and turned to (almost) any direction and still maintain its recognition. By choosing colors from the Balkan Connection brand color palette and a different twist of the logo for each release, the cover designs can keep up with their hectic release schedule of one-per-week.
Balkan Connection is a bestselling progressive house label based in eastern Europe with several hundred releases in their catalog.
Look Left
DROP developed a full identity for Look Left that leads the viewer’s eye to the left even as they’re reading left to right. DROP also designed and curated an icon set of more than 100 designs in dozens of color combinations for use in all of their in-house materials.
Look Left is a marketing agency that expands perceptions of their clients by taking non-traditional tactics to every step of their process.
Sound Avenue
DROP developed an identity system for Sound Avenue influenced by the street sign design in their home city in Belgium, and incorporates an embedded seal of a winding road in the shape of an “S".
Sound Avenue is a bestselling progressive house label based in Belgium.
Conquer
DROP principal Ben Mautner created the geometric Conquer logo that is both a mountain to be conquered and a crown to be worn, with thick and chunky custom typography inspired by New York. The covers and social media images utilize the logo in clever but different ways, reflecting the unique sound of each release.
Conquer is a genre-defying electronic music label in Brooklyn that focuses on new, weird sounds with courageous, heavy beats.
Mind Over Matter
DROP principal Ben Mautner designed a logo for Mind Over Matter made of a saw wave shape and a square wave shape, cropping one over the other to create an “M” over another “M” using the very waveforms that make up the music on the label.
Mind Over Matter is a progressive house and deep house record label based in Oslo, Norway.
Voices By Bach
DROP designed a multicolor brand identity for Voices By Bach featuring a radiating “O” to symbolize a singing voice, accompanied by varying weights of typography within the logo to represent all the different people and backgrounds that come together to form the team.
Voices by Bach is a vocal teaching and coaching studio in California that offers opportunities for people of all means.