Little King is a music collaborative created by Ryan Padilla; making music for the beautifully broken. I’ve had the privilege of working closely with him to create evolving visuals & branding spanning several years and multiple releases.
For the debut album we created a visual language that would encompass the entire album by creating illustrative iconography for each song that also blended together to make a full story. We felt that the feeling of the music was represented well using watercolor to create imagery that could be stand-alone imagery as well as blended together in an abstract collection.
I drew and painted the artwork by hand; creating over a dozen individual pieces that told a collective story.
So This Is How Things Are Now was released with artwork that represented the titular character surrounded by all the images that signified each song.
The final product was a full poster with 14 icons representing the 14 songs of the album, seamlessly blended together to create a single, storytelling image. The poster was sold as merch, and doubled as a social media campaign. Each post was accompanied by lyrics from the songs that were represented in the artwork.
Following the pandemic, Ryan wanted to produce a few summer singles that brought high-energy and fun back into people’s lives. The music was all about summer love, and the visuals were created with that in mind; vibrant memories, summer sun, and grainy nostalgia.
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The final cover art for the single release is wild, colorful, and intriguing. It combines hand drawn elements, film photography, custom type, and image scans.
The latest release from Little King is a single leading up to another full album. The music collective has begun creating more exploratory work and the branding has followed. The visuals are created to invoke feelings of longing and distant memories.
More coming soon.
