The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza
Danza III: The Series of Unfortunate Events
Timeframe
February - March 2020
Roles
Typography
Layout
Photo Editing
Tools
InDesign
Photoshop
Illustrator
The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza is a metal band founded in 2004 from Murfreesboro, TN. Their new album Danza III: The Series of Unfortunate Events is their first featuring new members Josh Travis on guitar (right) and Mike Bradley on drums (left.) How might we give the record a visual style that can match their dark, dystopian lyrical themes and aggressive sound while also reassuring old fans that the new members won’t disappoint?
The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza
Original Cover
The first thing I did was listen to the album and read over the lyrics. Even though I’ve listened to this album for 11 years I don’t actually know many of the lyrics because I’m usually more focused on what the band is doing. I highlighted key phrases from each song to see if I could pull out a theme or anything that could inspire the art. The second song, “Yippie-Kay-Yay MotherF@#$%^,” includes the line “With no colors that stand out but red,” which immediately gave me a good direction for color.
The photography gives a dark, dilapidated, and apocalyptic feel, which are the same general topics the lyrics touch on (one song references the H1N1 pandemic, oddly enough.) The monochrome red coloring gives it a horror feel, exacerbating the impending apocalypse.
The band never used a consistent logotype so instead of using a previous one they already had, I wanted to create one that would seamlessly fit with the dirty feeling the rest of the art gives. It also needed to be strong and aggressive like the music. The band is often referred to as just “Danza” in the metal community, so I wanted to make it immediately recognizable and the biggest part of the logo. I went through a few different lockups and typefaces before I found the combination that felt right.
The rhyming pair of “Danza” and “Extravaganza” is in all caps and broken, taking dominance over the rest of the name, as if being crushed by the sound, mimicking the guitar style and spastic nature of the band. The other words are in all lowercase and kicked up off of the baseline. The letters exist in a distorted negative space with grainy drop shadows popping them off of the background.
Despite this being a metal band and really trying to focus on the rest of the album looking dirty, I wanted to make the lyrics a stark contrast from the rest of it with a calm serif, WilliamsCaslon. I then used the same font as from the logotype and song titles, PRINTF, to highlight in red particularly recognizable phrases from each song. Even with that jarring contrast and the crooked, misaligned columns, it still retains a sense of intention and structure, just like the music.
Dieline
Danza at The Palladium Upstairs
Credit: ReturnToThePit.com
Bands like this usually play smaller clubs, normally under 1000 cap. The typical audience member is between 15-25 and their wardrobe is mostly black band merch. If there’s anything they don’t think twice about dropping $20 on, it’s yet another band shirt with a logo on the front and some lyrics printed on the back.
This is a shirt using the new logotype as well as some stylized lyrics from the first track on the album, “Vicki Mayhem.” Album-specific merch is highly collectible and helps drive physical sales of the album. This could be used to combine with the vinyl as a pre-order package or could be sold on tour as the only time it’s available.
Me in 2010 in Manchester, NH!
Credit: ReturnToThePit.com
I was in a nationally touring metal band when this record came out in 2010 and we listened to it constantly on the road. Though we never played with Danza, we played the same venues and toured with many of the same bands.