National Playlist Day

Playlist for Life (PfL) is a music and dementia charity that believes every person living with dementia in the UK should have their own unique playlist. In 2022, they created National Playlist Day (NPD), to encourage people to make a list of music that reflects meaningful moments in their life to raise awareness of dementia.

Our task was to give NPD its own identity and grow exposure and engagement for the day itself.

NPD is PfL’s initiative, but to achieve their ambitious goal of NPD becoming as widely known as Record Store Day, they knew it couldn’t be too closely associated with them, or even dementia. By dialling down the link to them, it would encourage other dementia charities to get involved, promote and take part. By not focusing on dementia, it would increase engagement with a wider audience, instead making it primarily a celebration of life, music and memories.

We created a timeless logo, taking inspiration from online playlist interfaces. A simple mark with meaning that could be used for many years.

Simplicity was key throughout this project. Not just to make things easier for PfL internally, but also because accessibility was important given the target audience. Colour and typeface choices were important factors to consider.

Warmer colours are said to evoke fond memories, so with this as our cue, we devised a colour palette with three key colours working alongside a deep brown and a subtle off-white – both of those softer, warmer versions of black and white.

We kept things simple, too, with type. The single typeface, PP Mori, was unfussy and understated – with some nice subtle touches of character – letting everything else take centre stage.

‘The soundtrack of your life’ was NPD’s main message. As part of the branding, we created a flexible lockup that would heavily feature across the campaign. This lockup allowed for unlimited interchangeable handwritten versions of ‘Your Life’, adding a human element to the design. The line ‘The soundtrack of your life’ could also be adapted, changing ‘your life’ to multiple permutations.

When collaborating with PfL, we specifically planned for the branding to have flexibility and longevity without incurring any extra design costs. We broke everything down into lots of simple-to-use elements and assets, and built a Canva brand toolkit for our client to work with, giving them immense scope to create their own collateral, such as posters and social posts.