DIY Band Logo!

[Michan]

Hi everybody!

 

As some of you might know, Richard Watashi, from this forum, and me, just started an "online' band. We are putting some songs together and we are considering promotion and release of the songs... so, we have started opening social media accounts and so on, and we came with the problem of lacking an image for the band. Our band name is "Dark Noise Club", so when thinking about our logo, to my mind it came that idea of those "underground" clubs lost in any big city! I wanted to do something like that, so I decided to take the dust off my pic editing skills. Since I had no time for going out for taking pics, I just went to an online free repository of images (unsplash), and transformed a pic from a discotheque toilet neon, in our "Dark Noise" club entrance!

I attach you both the original and the edited so you can compare!  And also, if someone needs help someday with something like this, feel free to drop me a line! If I have some time, I am always happy to play around this issues! ^^

 

 

 

I'll take advantage of the post to link our Soundcloud as well: 

https://soundcloud.com/user-998997411

 

 

[john]

More a cover/site theme, with the neon dark noise club straight on being the logo text.... all that said it looks very good!

 

Nice one Ale/Richard!

 

That reminds me I need to sort out your marketing document access ASAP! Hopefully you found the ones I sent interesting

[Michan]

Thanks John!

 

Yeah, making a memorable logo is harder than just putting a band name. I am using the neon, centered, as logo for now, and a part of that pic as header in social media. I have edited an old pic I took, as "profile" pic of the band, but I can't fit the name there. But so far, I think we can handle! 

 

The marketing info you sent me is amazing! But I didn't have time to go in detail to all the documents, yet, I want to do it under proper focus! Thanks a lot! 

[john]

No worries. They are just to give you an idea. I will be uploading the full collection, latest versions. 

 

The Music blogs one is one to get started with, It can take time to build a relationship with music bloggers, and that doc will give you some useful info. You can use the Songstuff music industry contact database to identify blogs to target, along with Google. Meanwhile you should get to work on your artist bios and your press kit. Getting some photos are often challenging for online bands, at least ones that place you together. Just as well you have some photoshop skills!

[Michan]

It's a full time job, all the promotion thing, I'm finding. I will start studying in detail all the materials in my free time. I don't know how I will manage my time! But definitely the blog is a good idea, and so does checking the contacts database to take references and key people to contact. I'll keep you updated. Maybe I will make the blog so it includes some of the steps we are going through, and hopefully, it serves as kind of reference.

 

Do you see @Richard Watashi? We need to have pics of both of us!! So, you'd better start thinking about how to take yours

 

An alternative to the pictures is asking some artistic friends to make virtual characters of us, like Gorillaz. I lack skills for doing that, but one of my best friends is artist and graphic designer. Maybe he can help us a bit. If not, I'll need to learn how to do it myself, if I wasn't busy enough. As easy previous step, I can also easily take some pics and "virtualize" them...

 

I don't know where this all is going to end, but what it's definitively going to happen is that:  a) No boredom ever, again. b) We'll learn quite a lot on the way. It´s actually pretty exciting!

[john]

Just now your tasks are largely manual. While I don't suggest automated content creation, you can work smart. Automated content delivery is a different matter. It doesn't mean that all your posting duties disappear, but you can make a significant improvement.

 

Add to that, the first time through is a lot more time consuming. Not only are you learning, but you are building from pretty well nothing. The idea is to put something in place to get started, and start improving amount, coverage and quality. True you want to hit with a splash... but this is where working collaboratively as a team makes a world of difference.

 

That aside, doing something to a high standard is very achievable. Working to a plan with a decent strategy will still achieve far superior results to an ad hoc approach. Indeed, 9999/10000 times, an ad hoc approach is a complete waste of time, in that it gives highly disappointing results.

 

If you put the work in, not only do you improve what you can achieve significantly, you also give yourself the opportunity of having an end package you are proud of instead of having great music and everything else is amateur hour held together by sticky tape and wishful thinking

 

Hugely importantly, other artists are, in marketing terms, your competition... in that they are competing with you for the attention of listeners. You can either be that band who reaches 50 people, or 50,000 people. You can be that band that has a well rounded, professional standard product, or an off balance amateur product. You can be that band that has thought and worked it through, or a band who took a blind-folded swing and hoped for the best. You get the idea.

 

It isn't about reaching number one, or working yourself into the ground for something unattainable. It is about making the most of the time you do have available to make the most from your music you can reasonably make.

 

As to making money? The realistic position is nothing to do with getting rich, never mind getting rich quick. It's about making your money work for you, and putting things in place that give you the opportunity to recoup costs, with the hope of first breaking even and then funding the next releases and improving the standard of your work and it's possible reach.

 

There are so many things to take care of, true, but you don't need to do them all immediately. Hopefully with some help you can prioritise effectively, focus on the right things and with each release take strides forward that match a realistic expectation.

 

[Michan]

Wow, @john, thanks so much for this. I didn't get the notification of this message for some reason.

 

Today is day for studying and working on music related things, so I'll be on it (Band + Songstuff "stuff"). So far I jus did good social engineering yesterday in twitter xD

 

I'll keep you all posted! Sounds like a lot of work, but really fun!