Nathan Ott – An:Bruch identity, Resonant Bodies performance, Continuum album art

Nathan Ott is a jazz composer, drummer, and leader of the Nathan Ott Quartett. He studied music at the universities of Würzburg and Hamburg and released his debut album in 2018, which was the result of a collaboration with jazz legend Dave Liebman. For the release of his third album Continuum, he founded his own label An:Bruch in 2024, with which he aims to break out of the narrow confines of the music industry in order to pursue an interdisciplinary and multimedia vision.

The first design task was to develop a recognizable typographic language for An:Bruch. In a joint selection process, two very contrasting fonts emerged as the winners: Swear by James Edmondson, published by OH no Type Co., and Magnet Headline by Inga Plönnigs, published by Frere-Jones Type. Both designers happen to have studied type design at The Hague’s highly praised Type and Media program.

The media presented in this post use exclusively different variants of Swear for the reading text, while the headlines predominantly (but not exclusively) use Magnet Headline, which has a special feature in the form of a right-leaning italic. This italic is also used for the An:Bruch logotype. While Magnet Headline pushes condensedness to its extreme, Swear is rather broad in proportion.

The visual identity was applied to the two first productions by An:Bruch, the album Continuum by the Nathan Ott Quartett and the performance Resonant Bodies, which Nathan Ott developed together with choreographer Hannah Schillinger. The film footage for Continuum was shot and edited by Nadja Höhfeld, and that for Resonant Bodies by Kai Ehlers.