Graphic Designer
LVRGRL
FLEETING BEAUTY WITH BURNING LOVE
To be released
identity
marketing
Having grown up heavily influenced in era of pop in music industry, I wanted to create a project that reflected that love I have for music while attacking a gap I see it that market. I have ideated a brand identity for a theoretical music group as well as their debut album. LVRGRL is created as the response to a cultural demand. There is currently a resurgence in mainstream pop music, the nostalgia and emotion of Y2K, and a widening gap for Western group-based music market.
PHOTO COURTESY OF STEPHANIE CUI/STYLECASTER.
A POP RESURGENCY!
The post-pandemic world has brought a full-circle return to big pop. This is seen less in similar success to mainstream pop, but instead genre-fluid pop. The world has welcomed alt-pop as well as hyperpop off the recent success of BRAT. This pop is more emotionally open and personal, while also remaining sleek.
Y2K nostalgia has found a resurgence in fashion, design, and music spaces in the 2020s. This post-pandemic world has brought the nostalgia while the Y2K has come back in terms of a glossy, youthful aesthetic.
For a while, solo artists have been dominating the Western market. This culture of groups has been absent on this side, yet major success in Korean and Latin markets. There is also a sonic demand of collaboration between artists, citing a blend of voices and reach.
ENTER: LVRGRL
A group that will fill the cultural and commercial gap between:
Conceptual solo pop and mass-market fandom.
Aesthetic nostalgia and meaningfull reinvention.
Timeless emotional storytelling and modern identity politics.
LVRGRL’s goal is to reintroduce the magic there was with pop-based groups to the Western market — not for flashy nostaglia, but as the new standard.
LVRGRL BRANDING
The LVRB/LT is a sharp image meant to pierce downward, aiming to show tension with intense grounding. It is reminiscent of an arrow head, that is intentionally vertically heavy to emphasize the group's ideology of having a finite target and goal, and cutting deep into that dream. Their message and voice aren’t vague aiming to appease the masses, but rather stands firm in their beliefs.
ANGELITE
Angelite is a coming-of-age concept album following these three “angelic” figures where are symbolic versions of the artists themselves. The story is about navigating disinegration of their innocence after exposure, performance, and the illusion of beauty.
Each song apart of this album progresses this story as they rise into the temptation of the sun, and then realize their wings have burned. As they burn distorting their original, child-like selves, they fall back to the very Earth they once dreamed to leave. It is here they finally step outside the illusions of love and beauty and how that relates to rising to stardom, and reborn because of it. They finally feel ‘human’ — scarred by the cost of exposure and being
The album cover depicts a glowing child-like cherub flying up to the sun. It is flying in a hazy, dream-like, cotton candy sky above the open fields. This symbolizes the daulity of reality versus this hyper-dreamscape the story takes on. The nature they are flying above is eroding the closer the cherub gets to burning its wings in the light.
THE SINGLE ROLLOUT
***With this being a concept album, I wanted to create a fake, yet cohesive album based off of real pop songs — all curated to fit this narrative and something that can be presented as one body of work. This is done obviously in a hypothetical universe where these songs are not performed by their original artists, but instead reimagined original songs by this group. All rights to each of these artists and their labels for these songs I am using as mere inspiration for the type of music this group would be producing. These singles and complete track list are basically my lookbook. :)
Each of the four singles are meant to mirror the emotional and visual decent of the group’s story with this album, unveiling a new identity of these angels. Their original versions replicate the same lyrics and meanings with them, so where I wanted to focus for this design pitch was how they would be presented. This is demonstrated below starting with the single cover art for each.
There is no strict design system with the cover arts as I wanted them to be heavily symbollic surrealist takes. Designers such as Storm Thorgerson, Aubrey Powell, and David LaChapelle were big inspirations for this portion of the pitch. Since this is dream-heavy symbolism trip of a concept album, I felt the art direction of these singles should take that same approach. This is something that is not very common in mainstram pop music which usually relies on heavily showcasing imagery of the artist as the main push. While risky for a “brand new” (theoretical) group, it evokes a more art-forward push leaning into music as an artform, how this album should be digested.
The album’s narrative speaks to the distortion of self-image after overexposure and how public image is artificial. Using straightforward group photography which would simply undermine that message.