Josephmark’s eclectic identity for RCA prepares the pioneering record label for the next 100 years

With a 100-year legacy in music, art and culture, RCA represents some of the most influential albums in history, and today, are tied to genre-defining names such as Brockhampton, Childish Gambino and SZA. They posed global design and technology studio Josephmark the challenge of reinvigorating their brand identity, strategy, narrative, guidelines and website to mark their role as cultural tastemakers and set them up for the next 100 years. The outcome? Eclectic, boundary-breaking, and defiant. The record label is represented through a loud and expressive collage of colour and type. 

After delving into the archives, they resonated most strongly with RCA’s type-led branding from 2015 and, therefore chose to expand this design direction further. The resulting system gravitates around an expressive roster of typefaces, and is heralded by a tweaked logomark. "We have a lot of respect for this iconic brandmark which was originally made in the 1960s by Lippincott,” Josephmark’s Executive Creative Director, Alex Naghavi, tells us. That being said, there was an opportunity to refine the character designs optically, without correcting for the sake of it. “For instance,” she continues, “the radius of the corners on the ‘R’ and ‘C’ were adjusted for consistency, and the angle of the ‘A’ was tweaked to reflect the angle of the stroke in the ‘R.’ Overall, with just these slight changes, the mark remains the same but just has a little more balance and unity.” 

With the reimagined mark comes a redefined meaning through a new acronym: ‘Record. Culture. Art.’ – created to represent RCA in its entirety and the next chapter of the record label. “‘Radio Corporation of America’ served its purpose back in the 1920s, but, not surprisingly, it’s no longer resonant with today’s audience, nor is it encompassing of who RCA is and where they’re going,” Naghavi explains. “Creating a new meaning behind these iconic initials was a big deal and it was important that it felt truly reflective of the ways they permeate culture and the arts beyond music.”

The accompanying typographic system is a wild blend of typefaces, breathing new life into an antiquated industry. “What we didn’t realise when we were in the exploration phase was how crucial our type choices were to unlocking the whole mood for the brand,” Naghavi tells us, reflecting on the project. “We knew we wanted to give some nods to the history of music posters and album art with a bold 60s typeface like Compacta,’ she explains, but instead, they went in search of something fresher and future-forward. “That’s where Phase, by Elias Hanzer, came in,” she continues, “it’s a variable typeface that feels innovative, sculptural but also a little post-modern.” The studio loved the idea of integrating music with a variable typeface so, as Naghavi puts it, they “could achieve a ‘musical typeface’ of sorts” – with Phase being the perfect match for that idea.

Another consideration from Josephmark was that the type system should feel eclectic, experimental and diverse – much like the multitude of artists RCA represents. This sparked the introduction of GlyphWorld, Leah Maldonado’s mythical display typeface. “It’s kooky, weird and simply delightful,” Naghavi tells us. “For most designers, the thought of pairing GlyphWorld with Phase would already be too much. But for us, more was more.”

They rounded out the type system with two more fonts, Panama and Suisse Int’l. According to the Executive Creative Director, these were important inclusions as they provide balance to the brand, with the former giving a little more high-brow flair, and the latter acting as a neutral workhorse body copy typeface.

“The intention behind having such a broad type system was to give the brand a lot of variety and versatility, whilst maintaining a level of brand cohesion and recognition,” Naghavi notes. Because of this, Josephmark played with pairing the fonts together in various ways, by word and even by character in some cases. “This freedom in type combinations gives the brand this sense of intentional wackiness which is reflective of the heterogeneous art and music RCA puts out into the world. In the end, the type system became a key part of enabling RCA to forge its own path and identity – reflecting their non-conformist, creative and defiant personality.”

Colour is also central to the execution of Josephmark’s vision, with an equally striking mix of hues to mirror that of RCA’s artists and their music. All of these elements come together through the brand’s successful rollout – on its website, marketing collateral, and merchandise. Here, Josephmark wanted to capture the spirit of the new acronym, communicating the evolution of the brand and what it stands for today. Integrating motion and experiential elements, the new website is edgy, experimental and expertly executed.

Josephmark

RCA Records