Created album art, A social media campaign, and custom hand lettering for a hip-hop artist who had their strongest creative year during the worst year ever.
THE "CLIENT"
Gepetto is my musical alter ego, a rapper/producer whose music stems from a combination of raw honesty and b-boy prowess. His lyrical content covers deeply personal subject matter, scathing indictments of modern society, and good old fashioned braggadocious bars.
THE PROJECt
In 2020, Gepetto had his most focused and prolific year to date. Matching the calamity of 2020 with creative output, he created a 20 song LP named after the worst year ever. He needed album art, and a whole visual world, that reflected this transformation of struggle into creative power.
RESEARCH
Inspired by classic horror movie posters, I wanted to paint 2020 as a nightmare year. I was hugely inspired by the way designer Jacob Boghosian drew on Stephen King book covers and John Carpenter movie aesthetics to create a fresh take on classic horror vibes for the Stranger Things logo. I sought to combine the blue and bloody-red color palette with the energy of 90s rap and wrestling tees, bringing together the worlds of 80s horror and 90s nostalgia.
execution
Photos by baker Poulshock
I had portraits taken and HANd-Brushed my own ‘bloody’ lettering in homage to Friday the 13th Posters. I realized that composited movie posters—such as those for Stranger Things and Blade Runner—already resembled 90s rap and Wrestling tees in composition. So I combined the Compositing approach and lightning background of Rap/Wrestling Tees with the iconic blue and red color palette of classic horror posters, overlaying it with a combination of my hand painted letters and Benguiat Type (as a nod to stranger things).
Final Assets
using the same approach as the album art, I created assets for a social media campaign, delivering Gepetto's nightmare-year-turned-best-work to the world.
HAND LETTERING & ANIMATED Title Sequence
Finally, I created custom hand lettering for the title of "Pull UP & Dip," the music video for Gepetto's lead single from the album. I animated the lettering in a style reminiscent of John Carpenter Horror Classics. I also created other animated title cards that used a slight "jitter" to emulate titles in older films where the movement was created in-camera.
The social media campaign, album cover, and title sequence are all part of one world: the shared Hand lettering, typography, color palette, and overall look-and-feel work together to drive home the concept of a horrific year, with homage to both original horror classics and a nod to stranger things baked in.
FULL VIDEO
I collaborated with photographer and videographer Baker Poulshock to make the music video itself a part of this same world—in fact, the full visual realization of it, using themes of horror and boxing to symbolize the traumas of 2020 as well as the fighting spirit needed to make it through.
