Gaia Music Collective
Role: Founding Designer @ Gaia Music Collective
Team: Founder, Social Media Manager
Timeline: April–Dec 2023
Gaia Music Collective is a NY-based IRL community, creating collaborative music-making spaces with strangers. Through gatherings like circle singing, no-audition choirs, and interactive house shows, these spaces cultivate true safety and connection to do one of the most vulnerable (and fundamental) things we can do as humans – sing.
Founded by the wildly talented arranger and facilitator Matt Goldstein, the collective started in the spring of 2021 with a few friends in a Brooklyn apartment. It has grown to a community of thousands, including over 300k social media followers by the end of 2023.
All of this is probably best explained by browsing the vibes, watching this overview, or reading this writeup.
how i got involved
I attended a circle singing sesh in February 2023 after a friend shared one of Gaia’s viral Tiktoks with me. I went by myself, and I immediately teared up at the familiar sound of our collective vibrations.
A part of myself that I’d abandoned for so long — the choir/theater/church-singing kid in me that hadn’t made her way into adulthood — was reintroduced to music-making in a way I hadn’t experienced before. It was intuitive, left perfectionism at the door, and connected me to others in deeper ways than even my longest friendships.
The vibrancy of this community is challenging to explain in words, and even harder to explain in… visuals! I wondered if we could help more people discover this powerful community, to better communicate our story and invite more folks into the healing of music.
objectives
As my attendance became regular and I learned more about Gaia, the need for some unified brand + visual design was clear; the scope… ambiguous. In April 2023, I led a casual brainstorm with a few folks to understand and identify some short and medium term needs for Gaia’s visual identity:
Align on and clarify our values
Establish a logo/wordmark and overall visual system
Create a system for monthly marketing comms: IG, email, Eventbrite
In June 2023, I shimmied my way onto the team as the founding designer and am still actively shaping the brand as this project evolves.
outcomes
Over 1700% increase in Instagram followers from 6k → 110k (April → December) since the inception of a visual marketing strategy + unified brand identity. Viral content and word-of-mouth also contributed to high-growth.
An efficient design system that is flexible yet structured enough to reproduce each monthly event cycle.
An established brand that has opened doors for collaboration with high-profile artists like Natasha Beddingfield, Mahalia, Leslie Odom Jr., and the Broadway cast of Hadestown.
the process, improvised
“Branding” a community, rather than a consumable product, is a bit of a challenge. We wanted the brand to feel unified and cohesive, without feeling corporate and sterile. We started by defining the values of the community, and the identity followed.
At Gaia, I learned to improvise by asking, what does the music want? Similarly, the style for Gaia emerged iteratively, through monthly improv.
This project has allowed me to take more risks using instinct. I can ask, what does the art want? Experimentation becomes a practice of improv and play rather than optimization. This has deeply expanded my creativity, and sharpened my ideas as a growth product designer.
I am so grateful to build this community alongside the trust and teamwork of our makeshift exec team 🫶: Matt Goldstein, Hannah Tobias, Katie Means, Casey Abramson, Aubrey Porter, Simi Yuyu, Tracy LJ Robertson, Daniel Rudin, Kenter Davies, Sofía Campoamor, Miriam Bursky-Tammam, and many other people I’ve met along the way!
————
Follow along on Insta and Tiktok. And of course, come sing 🙂
Role: Founding Designer @ Gaia Music Collective
Team: Founder, Social Media Manager
Timeline: April–Dec 2023
Gaia Music Collective is a NY-based IRL community, creating collaborative music-making spaces with strangers. Through gatherings like circle singing, no-audition choirs, and interactive house shows, these spaces cultivate true safety and connection to do one of the most vulnerable (and fundamental) things we can do as humans – sing.
Founded by the wildly talented arranger and facilitator Matt Goldstein, the collective started in the spring of 2021 with a few friends in a Brooklyn apartment. It has grown to a community of thousands, including over 300k social media followers by the end of 2023.
All of this is probably best explained by browsing the vibes, watching this overview, or reading this writeup.
how i got involved
I attended a circle singing sesh in February 2023 after a friend shared one of Gaia’s viral Tiktoks with me. I went by myself, and I immediately teared up at the familiar sound of our collective vibrations.
A part of myself that I’d abandoned for so long — the choir/theater/church-singing kid in me that hadn’t made her way into adulthood — was reintroduced to music-making in a way I hadn’t experienced before. It was intuitive, left perfectionism at the door, and connected me to others in deeper ways than even my longest friendships.
The vibrancy of this community is challenging to explain in words, and even harder to explain in… visuals! I wondered if we could help more people discover this powerful community, to better communicate our story and invite more folks into the healing of music.
objectives
As my attendance became regular and I learned more about Gaia, the need for some unified brand + visual design was clear; the scope… ambiguous. In April 2023, I led a casual brainstorm with a few folks to understand and identify some short and medium term needs for Gaia’s visual identity:
Align on and clarify our values
Establish a logo/wordmark and overall visual system
Create a system for monthly marketing comms: IG, email, Eventbrite
In June 2023, I shimmied my way onto the team as the founding designer and am still actively shaping the brand as this project evolves.
outcomes
Over 1700% increase in Instagram followers from 6k → 110k (April → December) since the inception of a visual marketing strategy + unified brand identity. Viral content and word-of-mouth also contributed to high-growth.
An efficient design system that is flexible yet structured enough to reproduce each monthly event cycle.
An established brand that has opened doors for collaboration with high-profile artists like Natasha Beddingfield, Mahalia, Leslie Odom Jr., and the Broadway cast of Hadestown.
the process, improvised
“Branding” a community, rather than a consumable product, is a bit of a challenge. We wanted the brand to feel unified and cohesive, without feeling corporate and sterile. We started by defining the values of the community, and the identity followed.
At Gaia, I learned to improvise by asking, what does the music want? Similarly, the style for Gaia emerged iteratively, through monthly improv.
This project has allowed me to take more risks using instinct. I can ask, what does the art want? Experimentation becomes a practice of improv and play rather than optimization. This has deeply expanded my creativity, and sharpened my ideas as a growth product designer.
I am so grateful to build this community alongside the trust and teamwork of our makeshift exec team 🫶: Matt Goldstein, Hannah Tobias, Katie Means, Casey Abramson, Aubrey Porter, Simi Yuyu, Tracy LJ Robertson, Daniel Rudin, Kenter Davies, Sofía Campoamor, Miriam Bursky-Tammam, and many other people I’ve met along the way!
————
Follow along on Insta and Tiktok. And of course, come sing 🙂
Role: Founding Designer @ Gaia Music Collective
Team: Founder, Social Media Manager
Timeline: April–Dec 2023
Gaia Music Collective is a NY-based IRL community, creating collaborative music-making spaces with strangers. Through gatherings like circle singing, no-audition choirs, and interactive house shows, these spaces cultivate true safety and connection to do one of the most vulnerable (and fundamental) things we can do as humans – sing.
Founded by the wildly talented arranger and facilitator Matt Goldstein, the collective started in the spring of 2021 with a few friends in a Brooklyn apartment. It has grown to a community of thousands, including over 300k social media followers by the end of 2023.
All of this is probably best explained by browsing the vibes, watching this overview, or reading this writeup.
how i got involved
I attended a circle singing sesh in February 2023 after a friend shared one of Gaia’s viral Tiktoks with me. I went by myself, and I immediately teared up at the familiar sound of our collective vibrations.
A part of myself that I’d abandoned for so long — the choir/theater/church-singing kid in me that hadn’t made her way into adulthood — was reintroduced to music-making in a way I hadn’t experienced before. It was intuitive, left perfectionism at the door, and connected me to others in deeper ways than even my longest friendships.
The vibrancy of this community is challenging to explain in words, and even harder to explain in… visuals! I wondered if we could help more people discover this powerful community, to better communicate our story and invite more folks into the healing of music.
objectives
As my attendance became regular and I learned more about Gaia, the need for some unified brand + visual design was clear; the scope… ambiguous. In April 2023, I led a casual brainstorm with a few folks to understand and identify some short and medium term needs for Gaia’s visual identity:
Align on and clarify our values
Establish a logo/wordmark and overall visual system
Create a system for monthly marketing comms: IG, email, Eventbrite
In June 2023, I shimmied my way onto the team as the founding designer and am still actively shaping the brand as this project evolves.
outcomes
Over 1700% increase in Instagram followers from 6k → 110k (April → December) since the inception of a visual marketing strategy + unified brand identity. Viral content and word-of-mouth also contributed to high-growth.
An efficient design system that is flexible yet structured enough to reproduce each monthly event cycle.
An established brand that has opened doors for collaboration with high-profile artists like Natasha Beddingfield, Mahalia, Leslie Odom Jr., and the Broadway cast of Hadestown.
the process, improvised
“Branding” a community, rather than a consumable product, is a bit of a challenge. We wanted the brand to feel unified and cohesive, without feeling corporate and sterile. We started by defining the values of the community, and the identity followed.
At Gaia, I learned to improvise by asking, what does the music want? Similarly, the style for Gaia emerged iteratively, through monthly improv.
This project has allowed me to take more risks using instinct. I can ask, what does the art want? Experimentation becomes a practice of improv and play rather than optimization. This has deeply expanded my creativity, and sharpened my ideas as a growth product designer.
I am so grateful to build this community alongside the trust and teamwork of our makeshift exec team 🫶: Matt Goldstein, Hannah Tobias, Katie Means, Casey Abramson, Aubrey Porter, Simi Yuyu, Tracy LJ Robertson, Daniel Rudin, Kenter Davies, Sofía Campoamor, Miriam Bursky-Tammam, and many other people I’ve met along the way!
————
Follow along on Insta and Tiktok. And of course, come sing 🙂