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Discz: Where Spotify Meets Tinder

As music consumption shifts to online streaming, many users crave ways to discover new music. However, many Spotify and Apple Music users felt “listening fatigue”, describing app-recommended playlists as “hit or miss,” and wishing there were more tailored recommendations.

Discz helps users quickly find new music by swiping through 30 second snippets of songs based off of their Spotify listening habits and adds them to their favorite playlists. A swipe right adds a song to a playlist, while a swipe left discards it. Beyond music discovery, Discz allows users to create and share playlists, encouraging curation and interaction.

ROLE

Discz initially approached me to build their brand identity and design the MVP of their music recommendation app. After the tremendous success from the MVP launch, we worked together again to build the next social network for music. Users can create, share, and repost their playlists — all in one sticky and innovative user experience.

This included:

  • Create the mood, tone, and design direction for Discz
  • Design the logo, submarks, patterns, and textures
  • Design the user experience and user interface of the Discz app to bring it to market
  • Create social media templates for the Discz team to use to promote their app
  • Design App Store promotional images to officially publish Discz to the App Store
  • Design a deck for the Discz team to use while fundraising
  • Building out the V2 of the app with a TikTok-inspired vertical feed and Hinge-inspired playlist prompts
RESULTS
  • Discz has had tremendous growth in a small amount of time after its launch, reaching #1 in the music charts in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands; and #12 in the US music charts
  • Featured in Rolling Stone as the “Music Industry’s Hottest New Recommendation Tool”
CLIENT

Discz

DURATION

December 2020 - August 2021

SKILLS

Strategy

Brand Identity

Visual Identity

Logo Design

Product Design

UX/UI Design

Presentation Design

Design System Architecture

Developer Handoff

BRAND IDENTITY

Hazy night lights

The Discz team wanted a young, electric feel that would cater to their Gen Z audience. For the design direction, I chose purple tones as background colors to mimic the hazy, bluish tones of EDM clubs. This paired well with bright neon blues and pinks, with a glow of those same colors, to create a neon light effect for many of the elements on the Discz app.

For typography, we chose a big, chunky primary font that was bold and loud (like Gen Z), with a simpler sans serif as a secondary font. I also created a “vinyl disc” texture to use to supplement other graphic or UI elements.

photo collage of discz's brand identity
LOGO DESIGN

Divided disc(z)s

The logo was inspired by the OG CDs and vinyls, I wanted to take apart its shape and create a logo with a distinctive and recognizable icon. I found the separated discs to be recognizable at any size and an homage to discs themselves. For the primary logo, I added glows behind each of the separated discs to bring more of a neon light to the logo. I also added a gradient as a nod to the holographic CD disc glare.

image collage of discz's logo design
product DESIGN

The social network for music

The primary issues we aimed to tackle were:

By mimicking the Tinder experience, we were leveraging users’ existing mental model. A swipe right adds a song to a playlist, while a swipe left discards it. Users could further filter by BPM, key, or find songs similar to their favorite artists, playlists, or genres. In the second iteration of the app, we wanted to take inspiration from the Hinge-style profile prompts.

image collage of Discz's app design
image collage of Discz's app pages