Brand Identity in Music Merchandise

I will look into brand identities of a few artists, so that I can have some more understanding and knowledge of branding merchandise. I will also explore how identity can be built and exploited across different mediums. My genre is Indie Rock, and so I have chosen to look at a few albums from this genre and the house styles, to widen my perspective, and help me to create my own digipak, and magazine advertisement for the single “Helena Beat” which I am currently making the music video to.

I will first look at Florence and the Machines new album Ceremonials and its accompanying merchandise. I will analyse the brand identity within it. 

Album Cover

“Ceremonials” was given its name due to an art installation found by the Lead Singer Florence Welch 

who told MTV News “It was an art installation done in the '70s, this video piece all done on Super 8, this big procession of kind of coquette-style hippies and all these different colored robes and masks, and it was all to do with color, really saturated, brightly colored pastas and balloons. I saw it a couple years ago, and it was called 'Ceremonials' and then, like, Roman numerals after it. And the word sort of stuck with me, and I think the whole idea of performance, and kind of putting on this outfit and going out almost to find some sort of exorcism or absolution, to kind of get outside yourself, there's a sense of ceremony to it”. It is the bands 2^nd studio album and their second consecutive UK Number One in the Albums chart. The concept of “Ceremonials” could be illustrated through the branding of the album.

This is the logo used on the all of the CDs and merchandise from the album. It is a good portrayal of the album genre as it depicts the era of art deco in the 1970s and the way Florence Welch dresses, in the sense of smart and colourful. It also gives an aged look to the products as the music is that somewhat similar to the style in the 1970s, a “hippy”, “psychedelic”, and “bold” implication. Which contrasts well with the softness of the fine lines completing in rest of the letter, for example the letter ‘N’, is simply a diagonal bold line, and without the finer lines guiding the viewer’s attention in the direction of the completed N, it may be unrecognisable, and instead it offers a softer feel to the letter than if it were to be plain bold letters. This effect also gives the font a transparency which compliments most backgrounds when the font colour is changed. I love the contrast between the soft fine lines and the striking lines as the emphasis is overwhelming and conveys the genre superbly. This compliments the new music that is the “indie genre” becoming more and more popular nowadays, and this enables people to recognise the genre almost instantly. 

Merchandise for the album-

All of these are branded especially for the Ceremonials merchandise through the release of the album it also helps to promote not only the CD but the band also.

The digipak seen above displays the colour scheme for the album. The colours appear to be very dark, with the use of black and the contrast of lighter colours such as in her skin and the font colour. The colours appear to be black, cream and muddy beige. These colour portray a feeling of mystery and calmness. The mise en scene in the photograph, show Florence in a calm, collected, sexual and seductive, yet mysterious attitude. This is mostly down to the way she has been styled however, her body language also says a lot through the picture, especially in the mirrored images adjacent to her. She appears to be wearing a black glittered sequin v-neck dress, which when the light catches the dress, the light illuminates the dress to reveal golds. Florence is also photographed at 3 different angles of the same position, this is a clever concept as it takes one normal photo and extends the audiences view of the original photo, as if to reveal all sides of her. I like this as it portrays as if she has 3 sides to the one character. It could also resemble a secret, this is implied by the way her neck is elongated to the side and her body language where she has one of her hands holding her arm as if for comfort. This is what makes the photo display a seductive and mysterious element, the mirrored images simply exaggerate it.  The contrast of red hair on Florence, also makes this album recognisable and iconic to many audiences.

back            |digipak|                front

The album cover conventions have a simplistic design and colour scheme that showcases the artist and the title of the album. This is effectively portrayed by the contrast in the background against the light colour of the text, as said above.

The back of the album follows similar conventions to that on the front as it uses the same colour scheme and fonts, however, it uses lighter colours however, still keeping the contrast involved. The colours are now muddy beige and cream instead of the black and muddy beige. The text on the back shows a reverse in contrast compared to that on the front, where the text is now black and the main background colour is the muddy beige, with the large letters depicting the word "ceremonials" is in cream. This swap in contrast could be a link to the "viewed from different angles" effect such as it was on the front.