Evan BArtels

‘Lonesome’ Release Branding

Evan Bartels, an independent singer-songwriter, tells his audiences, “I didn’t come here to lie to you.” His songs are poetic, intimate narratives that require an attentive ear—they are not background music. Evan’s 2021 LP, Lonesome, is no exception.

Traditionally placed in the Americana and Country genres, Lonesome, marks a new phase in his music and sonically fits in wider array of genres. Because of this our team felt it was time to update his visual presence and reflect the mood of the songs versus any contrived genre norms. We developed a clean visual package that allows Evan to authentically showcase his art without tying him to a specific genre.

Read on to see more insights.

Since all of Evan’s writings begin with traditional pen and paper, I created a handwritten logo to be the primary mark, and repositioned the previous EB monogram as a secondary element. Evan’s writing has a lot of light/dark emotional themes, so we opted to maintain a predominately black and white color palette, using gold when appropriate to add a timeless look.

Video is a powerful medium for musicians to utilize, and a great way to visually represent the emotion of a song. For this phase in Evan’s music, we wanted to make sure the videos told the song’s story while still allowing space for the viewer to insert themselves. It was important to us that the text and logo animations used enforce the current branding, but also feel integrated with the individual videos.

In addition to each full-length music video, each video was adapted to support social media promotion and Spotify canvas features.

Email templates reflecting the new brand elements were also created. The light-themed emails better showcase the album art and other promotional items than the majority dark-theme used on the website.

Special apparel and stickers for the Lonesome release was created. Each design is inspired by a specific song or the album as a whole. Below are items that are currently on the market—more to come.