Residente’s message of connectivity and diversity was the biggest inspiration for the new branding to accompany his album release. It makes visual reference to the universal phonetic alphabet, communicating diversity and connectivity through changing the physical appearance of otherwise identical characters. Additionally, we were inspired by the shapes in flags from around the world, we removed the colors and broke them down into pieces, creating a unique set of visuals that appeal for universality and unity beyond any real or symbolic boundaries.

We developed a logo using a font inspired by the phonetic alphabet. The universally understood language embodied the album’s concept of cultural interconnectedness and global community. After settling on this guiding concept we started exploring the visual variations within.

Our first attempts were created using the values of diversity and unity and how these could be represented with mixed characters from different places or times - with these chinese characters we wanted to create an “R” pulled from the the symbol “民” meaning people. Initially we wanted the “R” to be strong enough to be a stand alone object for the branding.

We ended on a much simpler logo emphasizing the essence of the concept idea. Three versions of the letter E are used in the wordmark to represent the idea of diversity. It also serves as a reference for the many elements of our DNA and personal identities.

Throughout the branding material Helvetica Neue’s international characters are used creatively in various typographic compositions to represent diversity in the same way the logotype does. This was done with the consideration that the use of characters should not affect basic legibility of the sentence.

In addition, we created Residente’s album cover emphasizing the core concept idea about connectivity and diversity. We wanted to show that all humans are connected regardless of physical aspect, gender or culture and somehow link the visuals back to the roots of humanity.

We worked with different facial expressions, angles and poses but landed on this image because of it’s ambiguity - you can’t really tell if the subject is almost laughing or being angry. As well as the portrait we worked with coloured shapes, which are also used throughout other parts of the branding, referencing the flags and creating an appeal for universality and unity beyond any real or symbolic boundaries.

Having worked on the album cover, it was amazing to see this come to life physically. Here is Residente showing off his album cover in The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.