Branding- Green Day!!

Branding is about creating an image that people link to a particular type of product. Artists too have now created their own band image in order to compete with the vast amount of artists and genres out there today.


One band that have a huge band image is Green Day, since they first stepped onto the scene in the early 90's Green Day have had a reputation for being a punk rock band and turning punk into mainstream. They created a punk rock image that represented them as punk rock artists very much into the typical rock 'n' roll stereotype of sex,drugs and rock 'n' roll with quite heavy instrumental music. This can be seen in early videos such as Basket Case to more recent ones such as Jesus Of Suburbia and American Idiot.


Basket Case:



Jesus Of Suburbia:



American Idiot:



Throughout the years Green Day have established a band image that can be seen by their style, decor and colour palette. There are two colour palettes that can be seen in different media texts, firstly a typical representation of the rock genre is the colours red and black, Green Day have shown that their genre has rock embedded in it by wearing a lot of black and red, however only in their recent music has this band identity really taken place. For example in the Basket Case music video the only visible red is the red guitar strap yet in the more recent Jesus of Suburbia video a lot more black and red can be seen varied throughout the mise en scene.
Secondly another colour palette of green and white can be seen particularly in the early products of the band however can be seen in the American Idiot music video which conforms to the bands name.

Green Day's band image can be seen in this album artwork through the use of the green and white colour palette which has become a huge symbol for the band, the font used looks quite "goofy" which at the time fits with the bands image as they were young rebellious man singing about sex and drugs.  

When Green Day made a comeback in 2004 their band image was still recognisable however a more mature look had occurred and this time with a black and red colour palette still keeping with the rock genre representations. More recently the band established a new logo of a grenade to conform with the new mature sound and transformed lyrics of wars and politics still showing that they are still that fearless rebellious band.


By Heather Ainsworth