Creative Direction/Design: brian was wrong [Dance Musician]

During the early stages of brian was wrong's EP, "Rebuild (Your Heart", I started to receive demos of music that he had begun working on. It was a dramatic shift from the Hip-Hop that he had produced early in his career. His sound shifted more towards the world of Dance music (a world I knew well and loved), but more specifically dance music originating from an "emotional" place.

Through this time-frame, we began to discuss what the visual representation of this project would look like. His project sampled covers and original songs from artists on YouTube, Instagram, and recordings on this phone. It is because of these origins that one thing became clear: the visual look of the project would have to pull from the myriad of faces and voices from which he was sampling from.

Rebuild (Your Heart) | EP Cover

The primary question then became "how do you feature all of names and faces?"

It was a question that was incredibly difficult to answer. Just placing 60+ faces onto an album cover felt convoluted, and any early attempts I made were often clunky and lacked any aesthetic quality.

So, the next natural step was to explore other representations of the people featured and inspiring the project. In exploring the personal nature of the artist's music, the answer that I landed on was through the submission of personal journal/diary entries.

Formatting these images into a grid, it organized the many voices that helped create the EP, and this naturally provided direction towards the rest of the deliverables that were to come.

"Rebuild (Your Heart)" Release Event | Animated Poster

Using the theme and aesthetic style developed from the EP Cover, we then created a poster that would be posted across socials and paid advertising marketing the event.

Working with brian was wrong, I asked him to take select snippets from his EP and build out audio so that it would align with the motion graphics that I was building.

What resulted was a sold show at Brooklyn's famous club, Elsewhere.

EP RELEASE PARTY POSTER | Animated GIF

EP Release Party Poster | Static version

Rebuild (Your Heart) | EP Visualizer

Alongside the team from Aleph Films, we collected journal entries and videos from friends and fans of the artist. With all of this content, we then edited together an "EP Visualizer" that would not only exist as its own separate video piece, but also as a light/video show during the EP's release (see below).

In brian was wrong's own words:
"I came to them w/the impossible task of 'how do we blend 60+ people’s journals + songs into something that isn’t nonsense.' They came up with the full idea and provided pure clarity/confidence into how a collaborative 'musical scrapbook/journal' could work & feel."

Rebuild (Your Heart) Live Session from Elsewhere BK [Nov 4th, 2023]

In addition to creating the marketing assets for the EP's release and show, I worked alongside the artist and creative directed the event. The video show, lighting, and floor set-up was curated to create the "intimate" feeling that the artist wanted for the release of his deeply personal EP.

Printed out journals were created and placed around the space featuring not only the lyrics of his music (which made it so that the audience knew the lyrics while hearing it for the first time), but also entries from the attendees own personal journals/diaries (made anonymous).