Ember Sessions lives in the tension between intellect and intimacy — a lecture series that thinks like a museum and feels like a jazz club.
We built an identity that holds the weight of ideas. Typography that speaks, a palette named for the room, and applications that turn an evening into an artifact.
SERVICES
Brand Identity, Illustrations, Presentation Design, & Art Direction
YEAR
2026
Brand identity
The Ember Sessions identity is built on the cultural geography of jazz, the youthful joy of learning, and the warmth of a salon that strikes your attention as soon as you walk in. We built a system rooted in jazz heritage and editorial like intimacy: Merchis as the display voice, a supporting type stack designed for long-form thinking, and a color palette named for the rooms it lives in. The result is a system that holds the weight of a lecture and the warmth of a literary salon; equally whether at the event on a poster, a program, or a matchbook.
Social Media
Social media for Ember Sessions had to do more than announce events, it had to extend the room. We built a content system that moves between Instagram Stories and feed posts, balancing speaker introductions, lecture announcements, behind-the-scenes moments, and standalone statement pieces. Every post is built from the same brand language we builtt during the foundational phase of brand identity design. The result is a feed that reads as one continuous evening, not a series of disconnected promotions.
Illustrations
The Ember Sessions illustration system pulls directly from the visual language of mid-century jazz posters, off-Broadway playbills, and Atlanta's lecture-hall print traditions; the cut-paper shapes of Blue Note album covers, the flat geometry of WPA-era event posters, and the warm, hand-drawn iconography of jazz festival programs. We built a set of brand objects rather than icons; each one is a piece of the room, the elements that show up every time people gather to think out loud. Together they form visual pieces that can stand alone as standalone moments or layer into posters, social posts, and event collateral.
