Creative direction for brand, type, and sound.
A design practice across identity systems, album design, custom typefaces, and self-authored music. Nine years of work. Three Creative Director-level roles. One custom display typeface, the one you're reading right now. One music project: Lucky Lab.
A rounded techno display typeface drawn in-house. Used across NCDSGNS brand work, poster systems, and music visuals since its first cut. Most studios license. A smaller number commission. Fewer still draw their own.
An original brand system built to production standard. Logo family with four variants, wordmark, stationery, apparel, tiled pattern system, and a motion version of the mark. Carried all the way through to the lobby.
Band logo, EP artwork, single cover, and video production for Before the Winter, a contemporary Christian rock band based in Kansas. A multi-release creative engagement built on a mark drawn to hold more than one record.
The music project of a working designer. Two studio albums and twelve singles released as Lucky Lab. Electronic, bass, experimental, hip-hop, and ambient soundscapes, with logo, brand system, and every piece of cover artwork designed in-house. When the designer and the artist are the same person, the cover says exactly what the record is.
NCDSGNS is a one-designer practice run by Nathan Conrad, a Creative Director with nine years of professional experience across banking brand systems, music industry identity, editorial design, and custom typeface design.
Three Creative Director-level roles across Studio III Media, Delta Media, and the in-house NCDSGNS work. A BFA from Rogers State University. Based in Lakin, Kansas. Working across time zones with clients anywhere the brief is interesting enough to travel for.
The practice is built around a specific claim. The same care that goes into record design, where every element has to carry emotional weight across a sleeve, a single tile, a tour poster, and a merch run, translates directly into brand system work, where the same mark has to carry meaning across an app icon, a business card, environmental signage, and a motion intro. Music and identity are the same problem with different deliverables.
Logo families, wordmark systems, stationery, environmental graphics, and the style documentation that keeps a system consistent as it scales. Built through to the surfaces the identity actually ships on.
Band identities, EP and album covers, single art, tour graphics, merch capsules, and video production. Multi-release relationships where the identity is built to hold more than one record.
Display typefaces drawn in-house for brand voice. Specimen design, character-set expansion, kerning refinement, and optical adjustments. The studio operates its own type shop.
Original music released as Lucky Lab. Electronic, bass, experimental, hip-hop, and ambient soundscapes. The designer also makes the record. The same taste that drives the visual work drives the sonic work.
Editorial design for magazines, reports, and long-form documents. Grid systems, typographic hierarchy, and the disciplined page layout that comes from designing books and records first.
Motion versions of identity marks for broadcast, intro cards, app launches, and any surface where a brand introduces itself rather than just appears. Delivered as editable project files alongside final renders.
Identity, record design, display type, artist projects, or a combination of all four. Remote engagements welcome.
ncdsgns@gmail.com →