Still in Draft: Designing with Loyle Carner in Mind

By Chiara, Design Management Student | UAL

There’s something about Loyle Carner’s music that doesn’t just hit, it lingers. He doesn’t write songs so much as he speaks you through something, like a friend mid-thought, mid-recovery, mid-reflection. His lyrics feel like sitting in someone’s kitchen at 2am, quiet but honest, with everything unsaid just as loud as what is.

I fell in love with his work because it doesn’t try to be anything it’s not. He talks about grief, ADHD, race, masculinity, cooking, love, family and somehow all in the same breath. He makes space for softness. And he does it all with the kind of poetry that doesn't announce itself, it just lands. That kind of storytelling sticks with you.

As a design student, I’ve always been drawn to artists who live in layers and Loyle Carner’s world felt like the perfect one to build inside. So I did. What started as a zine turned into a full creative direction project. I imagined what it might look like to visually reframe a campaign around Loyle, not to commercialise it, but to sit with it, honour it, sketch around it.

I titled the zine “Side Notes.” It became a creative reflection on process, vulnerability, and the idea that we’re all still figuring it out, something that resonates deeply with Loyle’s voice. I filled the pages with imagined words, scribbled lyrics, demo names, journal scraps, and scattered thoughts. The design language pulled from worn notebooks, infrared textures, archive scans, and cassette tape labels. Everything messy, nothing final.

I also created a space called Studio 432 - a fictional, university-style creative collective rooted in collage, music, and storytelling. It was a way to imagine what it would feel like if Loyle’s world was taught instead of just listened to. Not an album rollout but a curriculum. Pages full of ungraded thoughts, margins covered in tape, and lessons written in lowercase.

One of my favourite parts of the zine was the spread on “Nobody Knows (Ladas Road).” Directed by Elliott Elder and shot in infrared, it turned the music video into something spiritual and strange - a visual metaphor for identity and being seen differently. I researched the process and turned it into a breakdown page, highlighting how design can translate emotion and message without words. It reminded me how good work doesn’t just look good, it feels right.

Another key moment in the project was his honorary doctorate from UAL in 2024, not something he earned through textbooks, but through life, art, and advocacy. That full-circle moment inspired a page in the zine, where I imagined Loyle as both student and teacher. Because in many ways, that’s what he is.

This project has reminded me that design isn’t always about solving; sometimes it’s about sitting with something, understanding it, honouring it, and letting it be unfinished. That’s what I wanted to create. A love letter to an artist who left space in his songs for people like me to feel seen.

I don’t know if Loyle Carner will ever read this, or see the zine, or hear the thoughts it helped me work through, but that’s not the point. The point is, he made something real. And because of that, I made something real too.

Still in draft. Still unfolding. Still inspired.