All work
०१
Identity · Album art direction
2025
Tanpura Records
A classical-music label wanted to feel collectible, not dusty. We built a type-led identity around the tanpura's long neck and a palette lifted from eighteenth-century court portraits.
Client
Tanpura Records
Role
Art direction, identity, twelve album covers
Year
2025
Outcome
The first vinyl run sold out before the launch concert.
The brief
Tanpura Records reissues forgotten recordings of Hindustani classical music. Their old covers looked like museum catalogues, and younger listeners walked straight past them in record shops.
The founders asked for something that felt like an heirloom you would want to own, but still read clearly at the size of a streaming thumbnail.
The approach
We drew the wordmark from the long, upright neck of the tanpura itself and set it in tall Roman capitals. Each album gets a single painted figure, framed by a gold-ruled border that changes colour with the raga’s time of day.
A palette by the clock
Morning ragas sit on lotus-leaf green, evening ragas on sindoor red, and night ragas on lamp-black. Collectors started lining the sleeves up by colour within a month of launch.
The outcome
The first vinyl run sold out before the launch concert.
12
album covers in the first series
3
raga palettes, from morning to night
0
copies left after the launch concert
Credits
Lettering: drawn in the studio · Photography: Kabir Rao · Vinyl print: a family press in Mumbai
