Q2. How do the elements of your product work together to create a sense of branding?

As the aim of our project was to promote the artist, it was very important for us to create a
brand which would be recognizable. Branding of an artist demonstrates their specific talents
and helps in connecting them with their target audience. We have seen many Hollywood stars
use single words as their ‘stage name’ such as Shakira, Pink, Adele, Eminem and Rihanna, and
we thought it would be fitting to have a single name, MARIYA, as the name for our artist. It was
important for the products we produced to have a theme and to sync well together, so my
team decided to focus on a set ideology. This also aids our artist in finding her target audience.

While making our products, we kept Richard Dyer’s theory of the Star Image in mind…..

The first media product we focused on was our artist’s Logo. In charge of logo, I decided to look
at different logos of some famous Pakistani and International artists. After looking at a number
of artists logos, we decided to make a logo with MARIYA’s name written on it

I found this font very appealing and suitable for our artist. It gives a feminine touch which was
important for us as our artist is a female. The font also brings a beauty and aestheticism to the
overall logo. I used the black color for the background as the meaning of it is associated with
strength and power which our artist wants to provide to the audience through her music. I
further added ‘a bird escaping the cage’ icon which made the overall logo a little mysterious.
Writing the artists name in English creates a sense of inclusion for the larger, international
audience as English is a global language with millions of speakers all over the world. It was
important to develop the logo as it would be attached to every other media product produced
for the artist, including the music video, website, digipack and poster.

When setting the color scheme for our digipak, we referred back to the colour scheme we kept
in most of the scenes for our music video, bright and white.
To reinforce the star image of our artist we made her the main focus of the digipak, we have
used a picture of her both on the front cover as well as on the back cover, The front cover
shows that there are two sides to a person a self-accepting side which is sun kissed and the
other side which is not sun kissed and is actually in shadow which is the self-rejecting side. The
title of the album is ‘Scars To Your Beautiful’ as in this album the songs are about
empowerment and self-acceptance.

The inlay consists of a quote by Mariya the artist which is about accepting yourself and letting
yourself free. These are the artists own words which helps to build a connection between the
artist and the audience.
The color palette for our website was a little different and artistic as we thought keeping
everything similar would be a little boring. Since color white was used in our digipak and in the
video, we thought to make the website a little bit different and appealing.

We used mainstream products such as Cups and t-shirts as merchandise as the audience
members are most likely to buy these things. Usually artist’s merchandise is sold online through
their website. This helps to sell to the international audience as well as the local audience.
International audience is reached through availability of shipping internationally. Merchandise
is an important part of a musicians career as the selling of it helps generate revenue and fans,
audience members wearing her products or using them will be another form of promotion.

Linking other social media platforms on his website also helps audience members connect with
the artist especially with interactive platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.
Our record label name, SYZO Productions is basic and catchy. This adds to the conventional feel
of the brand and is easy to understand and remember. Using these different branding
techniques, My team and I believe we have been able to create a successful star image of our
artist.