The Invitation
Sony and Walk The Moon reached out to H+ Creative, my then rep, specifically seeking to work with The Invisible Realm.
Following the success of Shut Up and Dance, the band was moving toward a more introspective chapter.
Nicholas Petricca, the band’s founder, found a direct connection between the visual language of The Invisible Realm and the emotional territory he was exploring with the new album.
The commission was closer to an invitation than a brief. Not just the album cover but the full visual universe of What If Nothing. Album art, package design, artwork for four singles, animated loops, and creative direction on the music video.
The Album
What If Nothing was praised widely on release.
Jimmy Fallon held the cover up on The Tonight Show. Jimmy Kimmel featured it.
The eclipse at the center of the composition became the visual anchor that connected everything that followed, including the decision to shoot the One Foot music video under the solar eclipse of 2017 at Joshua Tree.
The concept evolved from found vintage imagery into a mixed media composition featuring original photography. The girl at the center of the surreal experience is my daughter. A personal decision that made the project deeply meaningful. The album was widely praised. A lasting friendship with the band was formed in the process.
The Singles
Each of the four singles, One Foot, Surrender, Kamikaze, and Headphones, was released with its own original artwork and an animated video loop.
All collage-based, all built within the visual language established by the album cover. Four distinct compositions that extended the universe of What If Nothing across the campaign
One Foot – The Video
I traveled from New York to California to be on set for One Foot, directed by Robert Hales.
Shot at Joshua Tree during the 2017 solar eclipse, the album art had already set the visual terms.
I creative directed the eclipse sequences on set. The surreal visual language of the album extended into the film. Joshua Tree found its way back into the final artwork.
Single Video Loops
Each single artwork was extended into an animated video loop for digital distribution. A cost-effective alternative to full music video production that still gave each song a distinct visual presence on YouTube and streaming platforms.
The animations required deconstructing each collage composition into its spatial layers and setting them in motion; a process that demands as much understanding of the work’s internal logic as its surface design.
Surrender accumulated 1.6M views and 16K likes. Kamikaze 667K views. Headphones 564K views.