Adult DVD
A debut album digital world
Leeds-based dance-punk band Adult DVD have earned acclaim from Rolling Stone and The Sunday Times, been named ‘Best of SXSW’, played Glastonbury and received heavy airplay on BBC 6 Music. So when it came to creating their debut album campaign, we built a world around the music that could grow with the band. A world shaped by digital, design and experimental image-making – much like the music itself.
Bands now exist across far more than a record sleeve – social, campaigns, stage visuals, merch, packaging, digital music and more. So we needed an idea that was less ‘sleeve design’, more ‘system’. Less ‘packaging’, more ‘process’. Something the band could actively participate in, rather than simply receive and approve. At the centre of it all, we created a digital application that could respond to the individual taste, content and nuances of every album track. A system the band could play with. A tool that could keep creating. A way to build a whole world around the music.
We created a digital app built around the themes and artefacts found within the album’s tracks, with editable parameters that could generate visually rich content to be mixed, remixed and animated across different applications. Then we handed it over to Fat Possum Records and Adult DVD. What followed was an ever-growing campaign created, in part, by the band themselves. Not just an identity they could use, but a tool they could run with, experiment with and make their own.
The result was a whole world of image-making, born from the songs themselves and flexible enough to go anywhere – from album packaging and special editions to merchandise, partnerships, campaign posters, stage visuals and animation. Even a limited-edition skateboard.
