Our Work / HARD-Fi Stars of CCTV

Band identity

Back in 2005, Universal Records asked us to create the identity and marketing campaign to launch a new band called HARD-Fi. They were from Staines, had an outsider attitude, a bunch of great songs, and a title: Stars of CCTV.

For most bands, their faces are their brand identity. Think of Oasis and you think of Noel and Liam and their eyebrows. In a market that launches new artists every day, we thought we could help them stand out by doing things differently.

It’s not that we didn’t like HARD-Fi’s faces, but we thought it might be more powerful to create a visual shortcut that unmistakably said HARD-Fi. We still wanted to celebrate who they were, where they were from and what they wanted to escape. We kept that essence alive and let it drive the work.

We decided to co-opt the CCTV icon, then springing up in city centres across the country as a symbol of The Man watching us.

Over to Flossy on the HARD-Fi forum to explain why it was a good idea:

“It’s funny how the most basic of designs won it then… it’s a good thing though cos you see those CCTV camera in operation stickers everywhere, and now everytime I see one I think of HARD-Fi”

For the singles we wanted to continue the CCTV theme, by using black & white photography. But we wanted to add some more layers, to deepen the narrative. The ‘Tina’ mentioned on some of the sleeves formed a subplot throughout all the single releases. She later became a bit of a talking point both in the music press and on the fans forums.

We also added limited edition touches to make all the formats collectable. The sky on Hard To Beat changed across formats. The clock on Living For The Weekend counted down to 18:00.

We were chuffed when The Independent voted Stars Of CCTV the album cover of 2005.

Tagged as: Branding, Music, Outdoor, Packaging