I had a small victory this summer in the form of finally getting Hospital Records’ Spotify playlists rebranded. I’m an old man and still haven’t bought into the value of streaming services, so I’ve never had to personally interface with these playlists, but they have been a bit of a bugbear of mine for a while.

They seemed to crop up on my jobs radar for Hospital every eighteen months or so for the past few years – I would be asked to redesign them, I would mock something up, then it would fizzle out and they’d either make something else in-house or just leave whatever was there. Finally word came from higher-up though, and I was given free reign to redo them more thoughtfully.

Despite Akzidenz Grotesk always being a crucial part of Hospital’s identity, we had never given much time to the Super weight of the font, until now. I pulled through some of the elements from my illustrated NHS300 cover into these playlists too.

The x-ray for the house party particularly tickles me – it might just seem like a bit of a medical non-sequitur, but really it makes me think of my big brother and his university days: I don’t think it was strictly a house party, but there was definitely a party he went to where he ended up breaking a bone. It just feels like the sort of inevitability of something that would happen at a wild house party!

I’m really happy to have finally tidied these up and not had them slip down the back of the sofa *again*! I love being able to create little series like this too!