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. 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 made chaotic, confrontational, function-first work that never 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 with Claude, n8n, and Atlassian Rovo. I had no formal engineering background going in. Sales and marketing teams now generate on-brand material without me in the room, and the system has cut creative overhead by two to six hours per task. 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, including brand identity, release curation, manufacturing, and distribution. It has a defined sound and a visual language, and it ships on the same platforms as major-label acts with no compromise on either end. I’ve also recorded and performed live under my own name and with other industrial and techno acts across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. These days I focus on studio work and releases, and the label and the day job get most of my attention.
My approach has stayed the same across all of it. I build the system end to end and apply taste inside it. I learn the discipline hands-on, without waiting for permission or a formal credential. My design instinct sits closer to soft brutalism than polish: form follows what the thing actually needs to do, even when that looks different from what wins a portfolio review. I stay close to something real, a scene, a label, a room full of people who don’t care about your resume, so 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 on design, brand systems, and the overlap between underground music culture and enterprise creative work, especially for collegiate and professional audiences.
I’m looking for a role where the brand system and the AI behind it are the job: a first creative leader, head of creative systems, or creative director at an organization that needs its brand built end to end.