Scorpion Music Group

Visual Identity

Client
Scorpion Music Group
Location
UK / Africa
Services
Creative direction, brand identity design, visual language, campaign assets, style guide
Team
Piero Salardi, creative director and lead designer. Renzo Zamora, designer. Rodrigo Franklin (Funkito), motion graphics.

The label

Some sounds arrive before the world is ready for them. Amapiano took root in South African townships before filling festival stages across three continents. R&B and reggae crossed borders, absorbed new rhythms, and kept moving. Scorpion Music Group grew inside that movement, a boutique independent label rooted between the UK and Africa, finding raw talent, developing it, and bringing it to the world stage.

Kaya Fest

SMG holds an active role in producing Kaya Fest, one of the world's leading reggae and culture celebrations. The label needed an identity with the same reach as the sound, rooted in African spirit.

Philosophy

Music unites. Love transcends. Peace builds brotherhood. SMG shapes and supports artists who carry the spark to move people. The work happens away from the spotlight, built on dedication, discipline, and the tireless hours behind every release.

The brief

Music is a peaceful spiritual revolution, a force that connects across borders and lifts culture higher. This belief became the design brief. The identity had to carry the feeling of sound itself, the way a frequency moves through a room and touches everyone in it at once.

The Mark

The mark came from the vinyl record. Dividing the record into four revealed curved segments that read as echo, repetition, and sound frequency. Rearranging two of those arcs formed an S, the Scorpion monogram. Three grooves run through each curve, carrying the three pillars of the label: artist development, music production, music festivals. Four built the form. Three carries the meaning.

  • Logotype: Scorpion Music Group logotype
  • Lockups: Logo lockups in black and blue
  • From vinyl record to the S monogram
  • The mark, animated
  • Logo on black
  • Logo on blue
  • Logo construction
  • Typography

Identity in use

  • Logo on the office wall
  • Pin buttons on a denim jacket
  • Stationery
  • Flags
  • Logo on a festival stage screen
  • Blue logo pattern

Sound Made Visible

The visual language came from cymatics, the science of frequency becoming visible form. The system started with a grid for mapping frequency and hertz into visual rhythm. Bold lines and geometric figures echo African textile. Structure enough to scale, rhythm enough to feel alive.

  • Cymatics references
  • Pattern system
  • Pattern tiles
  • Patterns in motion

Artist Portraits

Each artist brought their own photograph. A custom cymatic treatment, built in Photoshop and brought to motion through Nuke X and After Effects, ripples every portrait with the same frequency. Each face stays its own and joins one visual language.

  • Portrait treatment in motion
  • Artist portraits with the cymatic treatment
  • Portraits in motion

Brand Colors

Each color was chosen with intention, a hue tied to a feeling, a feeling tied to an artist. One system, a different voice for everyone inside it.

  • Primary and secondary colors with tints

Modular Design System

Pattern, type, mark, and color recombine as the message demands: artwork leads a release, the portrait leads a spotlight, the date leads a show. Hierarchy moves. Identity holds.

  • Release layout one
  • Release layout two
  • Release layout three
  • Release layout four
  • Spotlight layout
  • Show layout

Billboards

  • Wide billboard, release
  • Wide billboard, show
  • Billboard artwork
  • Billboard on site

Posters

  • Posters at a bus shelter
  • Poster, Tony Ruption
  • Poster, Ky-Mani Marley
  • Poster, Veronika Bozeman
  • Poster, James Brown II
  • Poster, KC-Clarke
  • Poster, James Mc-Vey
  • Posters in motion
  • Posters on site
  • Posters at a bus stop

Social Media

  • Social media posts
  • Social video one
  • Social video two
  • Social video three

Merchandise

  • Tote bags
  • T-shirts
  • Mugs
  • Backstage passes

Reflection

The strongest identities carry a single idea all the way through. For SMG, that idea was sound made visible. Resonate is the physics, sound becoming visible form. Higher is the state the music brings, the moment a festival crowd rises together and the night lifts. Scorpion Music Group. Resonate Higher.

  • Vinyl record with SMG pattern sleeve

Next project: Logo Collection V3

Piero Salardi | Graphic and Web Experience Designer in Victoria, BC