Nick Viola
Creative Director. Systems builder. Still an artist.
I've been plugged into underground music since I was a kid, industrial, techno, heavy metal, and the design world that grew up alongside it left as much of a mark on me as the music did. Raygun magazine, Frank Kozik, Aidan Hughes, and especially The Designers Republic: chaotic, confrontational, function-first work that never once cared about looking clean for its own sake. The way TDR could make a corporate identity system feel like it belonged on a record sleeve is basically the job I do now.
At Network Optix, I've spent seven years as the only full-time creative at a $30 million-plus enterprise platform. I built the brand system from scratch across five products, then taught myself to build the AI automation running underneath it, using Claude, n8n, and Atlassian Rovo, with no formal engineering background going in. Sales and marketing teams now generate on-brand material without me in the room. Work that used to take two to six hours per task takes seconds. Nobody handed me that system. I built it because the alternative was staying the bottleneck forever.
In 2022 I founded Valley Electroniks, an independent techno label, outsider techno for outsider people. I run every part of it: brand identity, release curation, manufacturing, distribution. A defined sound and visual language, distributed on the same platforms as major-label acts, no compromise on either end. I've also recorded and performed live under my own name, and as part of other industrial and techno acts, across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. These days that's shifted to studio work and releases, by choice, not absence, the label and the day job are where my attention actually goes now.
My approach hasn't changed much across any of it. Build the system, don't just apply taste inside someone else's. Learn the discipline hands-on instead of waiting for permission or a formal credential. And underneath all of it, a design instinct closer to soft brutalism than polish, form should follow what the thing actually needs to do, not what looks good in a portfolio review. Stay close enough to something real, a scene, a label, a room full of people who don't care about your resume, that the work never gets soft.
I've spoken at my alma mater, the Art Institute of California, and I'm open to more of it, design, brand systems, or the intersection of underground music culture and enterprise creative work, especially with collegiate and professional audiences.
I'm targeting VP of Brand, VP of Creative, and Group Creative Director roles, with organizations that need someone who builds the brand system end to end, not just signs off on one.