Postmodern Jukebox
A visual world as timeless as the music.
Postmodern Jukebox transports songs by pulling contemporary pop into jazz clubs, speakeasies, and vaudeville stages, making them feel simultaneously from another era and completely alive in the present.
The challenge was to build a visual world as theatrical, anachronistic, and unmistakable as the music itself.
Executive Creative Direction: Sean M. Smith
Art Direction + Design: Edward Taylor, Sean M. Smith
Brand Identity · Style Guide · Campaign Materials · Digital & Print · Packaging
The Brief
PMJ had a distinct sound and a growing audience. What it needed was a visual identity that could keep up.
The work had to stretch across touring shows, changing lineups, digital, social, print and merchandise while still feeling unmistakably PMJ.
The challenge was building a system with enough character to feel like the band, and enough flexibility to keep working as everything around it changed.
The Idea
Rather than build a conventional band identity, we built the visual world around the music.
The creative direction treated PMJ as a universe with its own visual rules rather than a conventional band identity.
Typography felt pulled from a forgotten printer's drawer, mixed with a modern flair. Color carried the warmth and imperfection of aged photography. Composition borrowed from vintage entertainment posters, playbills, and theatrical ephemera.
The Direction
Every show brought a new combination of performers, songs and eras. The identity needed to accommodate all of it without becoming a collection of unrelated treatments.
We built the system around a small set of recognizable ingredients; typography, photography, color and composition, then pushed those ingredients differently from one campaign to the next.
The result was a brand that could move from intimate club dates to major tours without losing its character.
The System
The brand guide turned those ideas into something the team and outside partners could actually use. It defined the visual language across identity, campaigns, social, digital, print and merchandise while leaving enough room for the work to evolve.
Different show. Different era. Same world.
The Outcome
Years after the initial work, the visual identity continues to define Postmodern Jukebox across its shows and communications.
The music keeps changing. The performers change. The era changes but still know it's PMJ.
