Idles launch new album campaign for ‘TANGK’
Dive into the design of the latest album campaign by Idles
Idles released ‘TANGK’ (pronounced: Tank) into the world on the 16th of February, igniting the fanbase once again and harnessing ten hard-hitting tracks. This album also sees Idles reinvent themselves from the straight-edged sans-serif typeface for 2020’s ‘Ultra Mono’ and previous album ‘Crawler’, to the now ultra-rounded, bubbly typeface used for their latest album campaign. It’s a refined look and feel that has a large impact graphically and spatially, but also helps define their new era.
‘Pop Pop Pop-up’, Idles’ latest pop-up store, arrived in Brick Lane on Friday 15th February, to help promote ‘TANGK’. It included the words “Pop Pop Pop” and ‘Love is the fing’ in uppercase bubble lettering, sitting in white on the windows. The same typography sits on their manilla shopping bags, this time in black. It’s a consistent campaign that reflects the video intros for singles ‘Grace’, ‘Gift Horse’ and ‘Dancer’, using the lettering on the thumbnail and opening credits.
The new album cover for ‘TANGK’ uses the white lettering across the top of a black background. A cloud emitting a beam of light on one side sits underneath, emerging from the darkness of the sleeve. The bubble typeface has the greatest impact when used on a large scale and when utilising contrasting colours, enabling it to be read from far away, even at the back of the stalls at a show (we imagine). On the band’s website the wording is typeset at this scale but is balanced with an dominant orange coloured background. The secondary font Helvetica Neue is used for smaller details such as tour date info and other call to actions, giving the bubble wording a prominent position.
TANGK’s branding is taken across to the tour poster for their initial run, starting in July 2024. A pastel pink colour is used for the text whilst the background uses a cold blue. With so much black now used to indicate the sold out dates, the pink still softens the palette. The special vinyl package brought out by Blood Records for the album shows the record set within a 10 inch gold heart. The inner branding is marked with an ‘A’ and ‘B’ to indicate the track side. A splatter design for the larger 12 inch disc adds to the theme of “love” as they mention on the website. The package has sold out on the website.
Idles’ new album TANGK is out now on Partisan Records.