Le Youth — Reminders Album Package

Briefing

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Collaborating on art direction and design with Ben Chadwick for This Never Happened, Wes (Le Youth) reached out about working on his new album titled 'Reminders'.

The album is an emotional deep dive both lyrically and musically into Wes' life, relationships, and experiences.

Inspired by 'in the moment' documentary-style filmic photography, Ben and I wanted to capture a very raw and expressive attitude that Wes brings to his music. 

Getting Conceptual

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Exploring fashion photography, broken lenses, and toy cameras, and directed with a more 'carefree' and 'raw' filter on life, we kept the creative focused on people, memories, and moments you might get caught daydreaming about. 

With a high grain and very vivid use of edgy colours, we wanted to capture that very raw feeling you get re-living these moments in your mind. Sometimes memories become tinted with nostalgia, and other times you're chasing that feeling you got when you first experienced them, only to have it escape you or be reborn through something else. 

Research & Development

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We added a personal touch to the artwork using Wes' handwriting as the track name.

Using displacement maps, blurs, grain and gradient maps to push the imagery into a fine art style.

Motion

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Layering multiple exposures with textures, and using masks for both the static artwork and visualisers created a very textural and choppy feeling to the creative.

I created an AR filter hosted on the Le Youth Instagram for fans, which would create a changeable kaleidoscopic image in the style of the album cover. This could be used at shows as a way to promote the album. Outside of the shows, it has the lead single from the album playing in the background.

Outcome

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Hosted on both the Le Youth and This Never Happened YouTube channels, the album and singles recieved over one million views on YouTube, and over 14 million streams on Spotify in the first year. Le Youth also toured the album with sold out shows across the U.S.