Motown Research

I have been assigned the role of researching Motown bands, names and logos to fit with our first ideas of creating a Motown themed band for this project. The band will be doing a cover version of Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' and so it could be interesting to mix the iconic image of Motown with the modern sounds of Beyonce.

Motown was a major music label, first established in the early 60's by Berry Gordy Jr., originally known as Tamla Records. As the style of music and fashion has changed since then I will be careful in selecting the Motown elements which I choose to incorporate into our band's identity as it is important to keep up with trends and appeal to the large target audience, highlighted by our representative.

Firstly I looked on the Classic Motown website to find bands which featured three female lead singers. I found 'The Velvelettes' 'Martha Reeves & The Vandellas', 'Diana Ross & The Supremes' and 'The Marvelettes' and can instantly see similarities between each group. For example, they all wear similar dresses and outfits in pictures that can be found:

If we look specifically at the fonts in the above pictures there are a few recurring themes such as: bold, black text, no italics and simple fonts. However, having searched other Motown logos and fonts, it can be seen that the use of highlights behind the main text is used (also seen in the above Diana Ross & The Supremes album cover).

This shows that despite the use of bold simple fonts, they can be made more interesting with highlights. I think this is something which I can easily incorporate into our bands logo.

As with many widely known brands, logos and labels they can become recognisable through their font and a house style is created. I feel it is important to create a house font or style for the band in order to have their own originality in their chosen market. And I will look at different fonts later.

Looking at Motown names, it is apparent that most of the names follow similar themes such as 'Someone & The Somethings' eg. Diana Ross & The Supremes. Many names have 'The' in it but I have noticed that bands with female singers tend to have 'ettes' at the end of the name e.g The Velvelettes, The Marvelettes etc.
Now I have researched the main themes seen with Motown I will be able to create a mind map of ideas for names and logos and then discuss them with my group.