Joyous Shout!

Positioning, Branding, Packaging, Advertising, Marketing, Art Direction

Creating a music label is difficult enough. Launching a brand dedicated to jazz, pushes the need for awareness and market distribution to a whole new level.

Typography is the bedrock of the Joyous Shout! brand. For the main identity, we focused on the name as the key to our execution. The combined “J” and “S” not only represent the company name, they form a saxophone which symbolizes the label’s commitment to jazz. By placing a shadow under the mark, we put a spotlight on the brand as an entertainment company.

As we mentioned above, the core elements of type and color, help to hold all of the Joyous Shout! materials together. By consistently building the designs from these elements, we are able to give ourselves room for creative exploration, while maintaining a unified look and feel for all of the organization’s products.

The CD sleeve grew out of a very practical need, making people aware of all of the Joyous Shout! releases. Inspired by traditional record label sleeves, we were able to introduce our album buying audience to the other releases available. This approach allowed us to promote more CDs to our interested audience, at a minimal cost.

MP3 purchases are critical for a small label. Dance mixes and limited edition singles helped us appeal to DJs and younger audiences. Influential organizations such as Wax Poetics, helped the label gain credibility and distribution in the soul jazz market.

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In collaboration with Giant Step distribution, we developed highly successful online marketing tools to help drive people to purchase Joyous Shout! releases. These self-contained flash e-cards were emailed and distributed through giantstep.net and myspace. For these mobile-micro-sites we developed MP3 and video players. We even had Chico Hamilton create an original “Scat” for one of our animation sequences.

Click the individual pieces to go to their sites

OTTO NY created limited edition posters for the promotion of new releases. The version above, features Chico’s snake-skin boots for his “6th Avenue Romp” release.

For every new release, we created promotional ads that were featured in industry magazines. We also developed image campaigns to promote live performances. T-shirts are always hot at live performances. The design below is based on the layout of Chico’s drum kit. The circles also allude to his reputation as a Mod fashion plate in the 60’s.

Conceiving of and Art Directing the photo shoots for Joyous Shout! releases was a dream come true. Not only did we have the opportunity to collaborate with the photographer Todd Boebel, we got to meet some of our musical heros. We saw Arthur Lee (founder of legendary group Love) and Fontella Bass’ last recordings. We also witnessed incredible acts of creativity by guitarist Shuggie Otis, singer Bill Henderson, Allman Brother’s drummer Jaimoe and Chico’s amazing Euphoria band. Capturing the work on film was icing on the cake.