Branding of a Star-Owl City

Owl City is a project created by Adam Young in 2007. Using myspace to display his work to the world he slowly became more popular and in 2009 he released his major label debut album 'Ocean Eyes'.
Over the years he has developed a very distinct style.

CD Covers
Owl City has a unique trend in CD covers and that is Adam Young never appears in them. For example here are the album covers.

 From what you can see he prefers cover art, rather than an image of himself on the cover. On many covers the images don't relate to the song in the albums in an obvious way, the listener has to listen to the songs carefully to make connections with the covers. Furthermore Owl City songs are very unique and require a lot of listening to find meaning behind the madness. On first encounter his songs don't make much sense they need to be appreciated and listened to more times over and require the listener to come up with their own perception of the meaning behind the song. This is possibly why he uses CD covers that don't match the songs, as such, so that the person looking at the cover needs to discover their own unique meanings behind the image.













Music Videos
Many of his early songs didn't have a music video and when he brought out the music video for 'Fireflies', the video itself isn't focused around him but more on what is happening around him. Later he brought out another album 'All things bright and beautiful'. He then made several music videos for the songs on the album the most popular being 'Alligator Sky' and 'Deer in the Headlights'.


In both videos the narrative isn't focused on him but once again what is happening around him but he has alot more time on screen. This was quite consistent throughout the early years of Owl City but now he has become more mainstream and has changed a lot of what used to be his unique style.


This is one of his more recent songs, written for the soundtrack of the 2012, Disney film 'Wreck it Ralph'. As You can see the video is entirely focused on him and what he is doing. Rather than acting and creating a narrative for the music video he is simply performing and the camera barely move off him and when it does it is only shots from the film and the set.