Web November, 2024
TAU — Musical Culture Space
The concept of TAU is deeply connected to the historical legacy of the VNIIMETMASH factory named after Tselikov.
According to legend, the factory archives contained the diaries of its founder. In them, he described his dreams—visions of the factory filled with melody and rhythm, where all the workers became musicians. Time has shown that his dream was prophetic.
Tau waves are the brain’s response to auditory signals. Our name symbolizes the latest advancements in psychoacoustics and the pure enjoyment of sound.
TAU is a space where the industrial past of the factory intertwines with cutting-edge innovations in music, sound, and acoustics.
About process: At the start, I had a logo, a font, and a color to work with. But the color and I didn’t click right away—I wasn’t sure how to approach it. The neon green felt overused and didn’t fit the given tags (industrial, retro-futurism) at all.
I decided to focus on the industrial aspect since the whole setting takes place in a factory. Industrial design is often associated with gray—it’s common in uniforms and also aligns well with the retro tag. But futurism was a challenge. No one really knew how to depict the past in the future. There were plenty of attempts, but they all fell apart at the seams, pulling in different directions. The vision just wouldn’t come together.
I started by gathering everything in the project that reflected the past. Then, I studied how retro style is reinterpreted with modern tools and layered in elements of the future—blurs, grain, and schematics with smudged or misprinted ink.
Eventually, I found the solution in a glowing green frame. It felt like both a postcard from a cyber-future and an early command-line monitor.
That little frame made its way from the website into the overall communication.