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Physical Newspaper for Album Rollout
THE PROJECT
In launching the inaugural project for his NoName Recordings record label, renowned engineer Derek “MixedByAli” Ali (Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Snoop Dogg) wanted to turn heads, and came to TBC's Label Services division with an idea. His first signee, Malik Moses, hailed from Baltimore. Could we make a limited edition printed newspaper modeled after his hometown's defunct CITY PAPER?
THE SOLUTION
We sourced out-of-print copies of the alt weekly and built a fresh newspaper publishing masthead full of writers, editors, designers, and illustrators. In addition to features on Moses and his collaborators, we interviewed Baltimore luminaries from sports, education, and TV. We created an illustrated map to Moses' favorite spots, and hid a track-by-track tour of his new album inside of the classifieds.
THE RESULTS
The newspaper became central to multiple IRL activations. Two-page spreads were used in a wheatpaste campaign. Copies were passed around at record release parties. And Ali's team bought plastic newspaper boxes and placed them for fans to find at the landmarks featured in the paper's illustrated map. They were so impressed with our editorial articles that they came back to us later on to develop related animated Instagram assets.