Kesha's Gag Order artwork trades glitter for discomfort, with an upside-down logo

Build an entire visual world for an album whose music was unflinching and raw — 'no bright colours, single tones, minimal contrast' — while keeping 'simple and bold' from becoming boring, and without a single nod to any previous Kesha era.

Portraits in the spirit of Warhol's Screen Tests and Cindy Sherman, stripped to single tones and paired with a logo whose E and A are turned upside down.

Roettinger flipped the E and A of the Kesha logo, a reference to the track Eat the Acid and the album's themes, then replicated the gesture across the whole packaging to give weight to language. Vincent Haycock photographed a portrait series of Kesha in situations of vulnerability; the videos pushed discomfort further — 'Eat the Acid' shot in one take with Kesha singing with hands on her face and in her mouth, and in the film for 'Fine Line' she is buried for the length of a song, an experience Roettinger says was 'a real fear of hers'.

The system marked a complete visual departure from everything Kesha had released before — intentional, per Roettinger: 'It was a time for shedding ideas from the past that were a bit more maximalist... It was about evolving' — with one typographic gesture carrying the album's theme across logo, packaging and film.

If you've seen the music video for 'Eat the Acid', it is easy to see why trust mattered so much in Kesha's collaboration with creative director Brian Roettinger, who is behind several visualisers on her 2023 album 'Gag Order'. The video is shot in one take and shows Kesha trying to sing with hands on her face and in her mouth; in the film for 'Fine Line' she is buried over the length of a song — the hardest one for Kesha to film, Roettinger says, being 'a real fear of hers'.

The visual world Roettinger and Kesha built is a portrait series in which each image represents a different feeling described by Kesha, inspired by work like Andy Warhol's Screen Tests and Cindy Sherman portraits — the artist pictured in striking images, but in situations of vulnerability. The design is entirely stripped back: 'No bright colours, single tones, minimal contrast.' No nod to previous albums, 'and that was intentional', Roettinger says. 'It's never easy to tell an artist to forget what they are comfortable with. It was about evolving.'

The one additional gesture keeps the austerity from going boring: beginning with the Kesha logo, Roettinger turned the 'E' and 'A' upside down — a reference to 'Eat the Acid' and the album's wider themes — and the direction was soon replicated across the entire album packaging. As for what he wanted personally: 'To elicit an emotional response,' he says. 'A feeling of discomfort. Love it or hate it I wanted people to feel.'

The stripped-back system matches the rawness of the record — the visual world and the music make the same argument.

Flipping two letters of the logo is a detail-sized idea with theme-sized payoff, cheap to apply and impossible to unsee.

Portraits referencing Warhol's Screen Tests frame vulnerability as the aesthetic subject, not a side effect.

Trust between artist and creative director enabled execution most pop campaigns would veto: a one-take video and being buried alive on camera.

One small typographic gesture — two flipped letters — can carry an entire album's theme while everything around it stays austere; constraint reads as honesty when the subject demands it.

At publication, more videos including the then-upcoming 'Hate Me Harder' were still to come, with It's Nice That calling Gag Order Kesha's most visually intriguing project yet. The upside-down E and A carried across the album packaging as the project's signature.