Polynoia
Brief
Polynoia is a podcast a friend and I started where we talk about our more esoteric interests. After we decided on a name, I naturally had to start working on our branding/assets.
Logo
The first thing I started with is the logo as I knew that would be used in many other assets we would need. I digitally sketched some ideas trying to play off the shape of the letter P and the nature of what we would be talking about. Eventually I ended up with the logo you see here.
Podcast Art
From there, I started on the podcast art/social media profile image. I wanted to lean into the unknown/esoteric nature of the topics we would discuss so I've introduced a lot of grain or noise into the assets to convey un-clarity, imperfection, etc.
Stream Layout
We planned on streaming our conversation live to cut down on editing and keep the conversations more natural. Because of this, we needed some streaming specific assets. The first asset was the layout for our main screen. The essential thing this needed was for both of our webcams to be framed nicely. I also wanted some motion in the background to keep things interesting. The final scene is composed in OBS.
Starting Soon Screen
We also needed a screen before we started, if we took a break, and when we were done. I used the same background as the main stream layout and animated the logo to give a loading feel.
Intro Music
One of the last things we needed was intro/outro/general music. We had talked about using a lo-fi style since it's generally more relaxed and inoffensive. Instead of finding a track to use, I decided to make one myself. I've written and recorded music since I was young (I am by no means an expert), but I had never used samples or made this type of music. The drums are samples I mapped to MIDI tracks, the guitar and bass parts I wrote and recorded, and the other sounds are all samples that I tweaked as needed.