The art of the album campaign: why music now comes with its own visual universe

At the end of July, Chappell Roan celebrated the release of her new single, The Subway, which was accompanied by a music video of the auburn-haired Rapunzel flitting around a hazy, surreal New York City as she tries to escape the ghost of an ex-lover. It’s a break-up ballad that dives hair-first into the emotional weight of heartache and trying to break free from it even as it consumes your every thought. As my heavy-handed pun may have implied, the affective dimension of hair was a central focus for the pop star who teased the release with tear-off style flyers designed by long-time creative collaborator Ramisha Sattar, which were plastered on traffic poles and street corners in New York and read “going through a break up, GET BANGS!” In the Instagram post announcing the release of the single, Roan’s caption shared how chaotic the last year has been for her, which left her with limited time and space to “build the world the song deserved”, and how glad she was not to have rushed the project so that she could “make sure everything was absolutely right”.

Looking at the contemporary landscape of music and creative direction, it is clear that the internet’s midwest princess is not the only one who feels strongly about creating a distinct visual language to accompany their projects. There is an impetus for most contemporary artists to craft an identity across every touchpoint, from merchandise and album covers to set design, social media imagery, and vinyl packaging. It would be ahistorical to suggest that world-building is a new phenomenon; strong visual narratives have been a part of the music industry since the mid-20th century, as seen with The Beatles’ concept album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or when David Bowie created his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust. For more than 15 years, Lady Gaga has committed to crafting a persona, some more otherworldly than others, to accompany each moment in her artistic journey. More recently, albums such as Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Solange’s speculative restaging of America in When I Get Home have had a distinct conceptual arc and audiovisual labyrinth of references for fans to dig through.

However, in the last five years, world-building has seemed to become an almost unspoken expectation for musicians and their creative teams, who are in turn rewarded for their ability to break through the saturated digital space and manufacture a moment of escapism for the audience. This reward is apparent if we were to consider pop stars such as Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan or Olivia Rodrigo, who seemingly blew up out of nowhere and managed to ride the wave of a viral TikTok moment through this use of narrative and visual world-building. In an essay on Substack, writer Coco Mocoe argued that Sabrina Carpenter struck gold on her sixth studio album Short n' Sweet because she leaned into building a “jaded Stepford wives aesthetic” that was unique and unwaveringly consistent across digital, print and set design. In Mocoe’s words, “She refused to break that fourth wall.”

In February 2024, graphic designer and founder of the creative studio Fisk, Bijan Berahimi, curated a survey-style exhibition of tour posters, music videos and vinyl packaging from 2020–2024 at The Center of Contemporary Art & Culture in Portland, to chart this shift in artists and their creative expression within the music industry. Eyes and Ears: A Survey of Visuals in Music 2020–2024 included visual assets from artists such as Chappell Roan, Steve Lacy, Toro y Moi and many more. Bijan shares how he curated the show to celebrate the inspiring work being done by creatives working in the music world. “I think the visual culture around music is always talked about in a historic context, people are talking about psychedelic posters or about what jazz covers looked like. But there’s not really a larger conversation about the work being made today, apart from people talking about singular projects or an album,” he says.

Charli XCX’s Brat, which was also part of the exhibit, is an example of a project that achieved mainstream success through an exceptionally thought-out visual and narrative identity. Everything from the lime-green album cover that spelt out “brat” in lowercase, to her enlisting the internet’s coolest, albeit sometimes controversial, it-girls to star in a music video, was meticulously curated to fit the “brat aesthetic”. In an interview with BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, Lorde shared how Charli XCX’s “masterfully defined Brat” inspired her to craft a stronger narrative for her latest album, Virgin: “It's so amazing when a peer throws the gauntlet down like that. We’ve gotta pick it up, and I’ve spoken to a lot of peers who all had the same feeling.”

According to Holly Williams, an in-house creative director at Studio Island who works with artists such as Lola Young, Nia Archives and The Last Dinner Party, creating immersive worlds has always been a priority for the in-house creative team she works with; however, what she believes has changed in the last ten years is the amount of digital and physical touchpoints that the artist is expected to reach. “It's so difficult to know what is going to resonate with fans, it could be a music video or it could be a 15-second interview that is posted online, so it is crucial to create this cohesive world across platforms that fits into the artist’s DNA.”

She also noted how many of the artists she works with come with definite visual cues and references for their projects. “When we first started working with The Last Dinner Party, the band came to us with a 70-page deck of all of the things that were important to them visually, from films that inspire them to styling and graphic design references. It was a profound, cohesive understanding of their identity and a set of ground rules of how they wanted to express themselves visually.” This creative conviction then translates to their album roll-outs and live performances, such as when they paid homage to David Lynch in their Brits performance in March, or in the densely referential cover for their upcoming album release, From the Pyre.

Fisk’s Bijan echoes Holly’s observation, sharing how musicians themselves are tapped into graphic design and visual culture. He shares: “I think in the last ten years, we’ve seen a huge improvement in the cultural literacy of musicians and a huge interest in the visual world around them. A big part of that is social media and the internet, which have given these artists access to a world of design and visual resources that could inspire them. I think being surrounded by this visual world also drives a desire for artists to make something special and more intentional for their fans.” Bijan, who works on graphic design and concept building for many musicians who are first-generation immigrants, such as Aminé and Raveena, also expressed how heritage has become a part of an artist’s identity and their visual language in a way that was not common before the 2010s. “People barely knew that Freddie Mercury had Indian roots,” Bijan says. “Now, musicians that we work with at Fisk want to explore their cultural history through their albums. A musician like Raveena leans into her South Asian heritage in her music, which gives us the chance to research old Bollywood posters and movies to inform our visual cues for the project, which makes our job more fun.”

Founders and creative directors of the Los Angeles-based studio See You Later, Darrius Medina and TJ Hoover, see this need to chase uniqueness to be viral as a result of post-pandemic music culture and the explosion of TikTok, which has contributed a flood of new artists all trying to differentiate themselves. Darrius and TJ, who primarily work on set design, lighting, sound, and other aspects of creative direction for live performances, share how it’s not enough for something to look cool anymore. “It needs to be derived from meaning and tell a story that’s threaded through the greater narrative,” TJ explains. “There’s more of an emotion involved in creating and conceptualising these sets, which has made the process more challenging but also fun.”

Working with artists such as Missy Elliott, Sabrina Carpenter, and Doechii, the show designers often borrow from film, theatre, and fashion to make every show a cohesive, emotionally resonant experience for the artist and the audience. Darrius expands further: “We’re always thinking about how we can create something that enhances the great narrative of this artist’s work, rather than something that distracts or takes away from it.” The studio’s work on Doechii’s Grammys performance was underpinned by this idea of respecting the album and the message it reverberated. “The narrative was all about how Doechii never misses, and that there is only one real Doechii, which we wanted to highlight with a set that looked like a clone factory and backup dancers who were styled exactly like the rapper. We used conveyor belts and different elements like colour and materiality to intentionally make the audience feel like they are in a factory space,” TJ shares.

The expectation from fans who now want an experiential concert that builds on the visual world crafted through the album or on social media is something both Darrius and TJ acknowledge has shifted how they approach projects. “We’re thinking about stage design as an extension of the album campaign and its branding. We see it as incorporating simple branding elements like colour and materiality that resonate with the world that the artist has created. Sabrina Carpenter is a great example of that because she exists within the world of 60s vintage glamour, and we can draw inspiration from how cohesive her artistic persona is.”

On the surface, spectacle seems to be the one factor that guarantees a successful music campaign, but Darrius and TJ share that it is not about the budget but more about trusting a singular vision and letting it inform your creative decisions. They tell me that something as simple as associating yourself with a colour, such as Olivia Rodrigo’s association with purple, can help set you apart. In an industry where virality can grant an artist fleeting fame, world-building on even a small scale can act as an antidote that gives the audience a chance to step into a visual landscape that can be revisited and reinterpreted for years to come.