Q2. How do the elements of your product work together to create a sense of branding?

As the aim of our project was to promote the artist, it was very important for us to create a brand which
would be recognizable. Branding of an artist demonstrates their specific talents and helps in connecting
them with their target audience. In our life, we have seen many Hollywood stars use single words as their
‘stage name’ such as Khalid, Drake, Rihanna, Beyonce and Cher, and we thought it would be fitting to
have a single name, Raza, as the name of our artist. It was important for the products we produced to
have a theme and to flow well together, so Fateh and I decided to focus of a set ideology. This also aids
our artist in finding his target audience.

While making our products, we kept Richard Dyer’s theory of the Star Image in mind. We can say that
the personality of our artist was constructed in pre-production. When focusing on sexual abuse as the
ideology of our star, we used media texts to portray him as a victim of abuse himself. Our music video,
digipak and website focus on this concept and ideology and it produces his star image. Producing
mainstream merchandise such as hoodies and phone cases for our artist also shows the application of a
star as a commodity as well.

The first media product we focused on was our artist’s Logo. In charge of the logo, I decided to do
research on different logos of international artists as well as Pakistani ones. After looking at a number of
artist logos, we deiced to make a logo with Raza’s name written in calligraphic Urdu with his name
written in English at the bottom.

The Calligraphic Urdu has a sense of exoticism as not everyone especially an international audience will
know what it means. This is why using calligraphy over normal text was important, as it adds a sense of
beauty and aestheticism. Calligraphy also has history dating back to before the partition of Pakistan and
India and hence has a lot of significance. Writing the artists name in English creates a sense of inclusion
for the larger, international audience as English is a global language with millions of speakers all over the
world. It was important to develop the logo as it would be attached to every other media product produced
for the artist, including the music video, website, digipack and poster.
When setting the colour scheme for our digipak, we referred back to the colour scheme we kept for our
music video and decided to go with some of those colours mainly greys, blacks and whites.

To reinforce the star image of our artist, he is the main focus of the digipak, we have used a picture of him
both on the front cover as well as the inlay and have used a picture of a guitar as the back cover,
reinforcing his star image as the guitar signifies that he is a musical artist.

We focused on lighting, hiding half of his face in the shots, this can be interpreted as Raza always
showing one side of himself to his audience and fan base, and this darker side of struggle and secrets is
being revealed in this album. The title of the album is called Azaad which means free in Urdu.
The colour palette for our website was the same as our digipak, but we decided to add a lot more of the
colour white to give it a lighter feel. We decided to add a collaboration of the artist with a famous
Pakistani clothing store, Origins, to create merchandise.

We used mainstream products such as sweatshirts, shirts and phone cases as merchandise as the
audience members are most likely to buy these things. Usually artist’s merchandise is sold online through
their website, which is why a collaboration plays a big role in the production of our star image.
Collaborating with a brand which has many shops in Pakistan means clothes will be available in the
shop for people to try on. This way, Raza is not only reaching his target audience, but a much larger
audience of people who may come to the shop to browse and buying a product of his which spreads his
name even further. An international audience is also reached with the availability of shipping
internationally. Merchandise is an important part of a musician’s career as the selling of it produces
revenue and fans and audience members wearing his products or using them will be another form of
promotion.

Linking other social media platforms on his website also helps audience members connect with the artist,
especially with interactive platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.
Our record label name, WingScreen Cinema is basic and catchy. This adds to the conventional feel of
the brand and is easy to understand and remember. Using these different branding techniques, Fateh and I
believe we have been able to create a successful star image of our artist. We have used different features
to include a large international audience while focusing on Pakistani culture as well.