Background —
Steven is often described as the most successful musician you’ve never heard of. He sells out arena shows all over the world, has hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers and has clocked-up number one albums and multiple Grammy nominations. Yet, despite all this, has kept a relatively low-profile.
Project —
I was introduced to Steven by his record label who explained he was looking for a creative partner to work with on his new album and live shows. Unlike other music campaigns, I joined the project while the songs were still being written as Steven wanted to integrate new ideas into the music itself which we could then interpret visually as part of the campaign.
We met up many times, with no real agenda, and just talked for hours at a time about whatever we found interesting. We shared articles, music, videos and ideas with each other over the space of several months.
I began to realise that we returned to dystopian ideas of technology, consumerism and individual identity more than any other, and these became the foundation for the creative — the aesthetic style for which was influenced by classic sci-fi, with its bold, monochromatic simplicity.
The concept for the album cover was based around the erosion of individuality, seen in the homogenisation of physical appearance prevalent on Instagram. Working with photographer Andrew Hobbs, we cast 10 people of different ages, genders and ethnicities and styled them exactly the same as Steven, then layered the images together to create a series of unsettling hybrids. The individual shots of these then formed the single covers.
For other aspects of the campaign, we wanted to talk about consumerism and the power of brands. Specifically, how an object becomes more valuable simply by virtue of having the right logo.
With this in mind, we set up a fake company called TFB, an initialism of the album title, who sell products that would typically have little or no value for grossly exaggerated prices.
We created an online shop to supposedly sell these ridiculous items, together with Steven’s music, all of which were shown to be available in small quantities and for brief periods of time, mimicking the limited edition product drop culture which drives excessive consumer desire.
We also used a series of nonsensical, but superficially believable, motivational slogans — satirising the prevalence of these one-size fits all phrases on social media, clothing and office walls.
These, together with the products, formed the basis of a dedicated Instagram account. We also carried the concept and aesthetics through to Steven’s music videos and teaser clips, which continued the overarching theme and design style. We worked with the very talented people at Crystal Spotlight on both these and the TFB website.
Working with Simon creatively was an inspiring joy. He is brilliant at taking raw ideas and fleshing them out into something with depth, intelligence and a real visionary flair.
He was able to get straight to the heart of what I wanted to say, crystallising everything into exciting and easy to understand ideas. The end results are extraordinary and his work has made a significant difference to the success of the project as a whole. No amount of praise is too high for what he did.
As well as being released on a large number of conventional formats, we also produced a special edition that contained exclusive content, the whole tone of which pokes fun at collector culture and brand loyalty.
Amongst the recordings was a range of specially created collateral like a warranty, customer satisfaction survey and a user manual, the latter filled with absurd diagrams, products and customer reviews.
On top of this, we had the idea to create a one-off version, essentially exactly the same but with an inordinately high price tag of £10,000. It was primarily a marketing tactic but it sold within half an hour of going on sale. The proceeds being donated to music venues affected by Covid. This was then picked up by national media, drawing attention to the campaign as a whole.
The project garnered widespread acclaim, particularly in the US where Steven is well known. Indeed, I personally received a Grammy award nomination for my work and I attended the ceremony in Las Vegas.