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Other Branding Elements

Let's dive in tow all the things you said before ok, great we know what to do but what is all this stuff? Fonts? You want to choose faan styles for your name tag line logo all these different parts of you unless you also need it for your website print so that it's consistent all right, so we're talking about fonts it sounds really boring. We're not talking about a boring thing here think of the coca cola logo that's a font in fact, I take anybody here and I can't look around the studio too well, but for those of you online, go ahead and look around your room and everything that's ah logo everything that's branded take a look and you'll see that each of them have their own font style in order to distinguish themselves it's actually a very key part of the brand we usually do that I usually do it even when we're in the classroom and I say, hey, take a look and I could just usually pointed out look at what's on your t shirt over there and on every computer this is really important and the ...

nice thing is you khun by specialized fonts to make yourself unique once you buy them you embedded into the image and you don't have to have that same font sitting on someone else's computer they're just looking at the image is how it works there's also free font libraries available for free for sale you can find a lot of them everywhere. We have some of that stuff in the indie band survival guide where we linked to it, but these air pretty easy to find. Still, we think you should take some time and think about the font that you use for your name that could be separate than the one for your tag line, which might be distinct from the certainly the one that you use on your website is going to be one of the ones that are good for webb and then for print materials. If you end up starting to get really big and you need print materials, you should keep a consistent font time the stuff that you send out to people photos need ready to use photos to journalists and media to cover you and a half in half by eleven is important to dio j peg it three hundred dp eyes what we've had recommended to us from various journalists that we've talked to and worked with photographers just like the graphic artist on the photos unless you do a work for hire agreement, if you're going to use some photos and awful lot what they will usually dio professionals especially, is the quote you a certain amount? For okay yeah I'll come out and take pictures for you but then you'll have to pay them every time you want another use of it but if you're going to use this stuff for promo materials or for making album covers you to have to charge a lot for that you convey that quote you a slightly higher amount or whatever they do for a work for hire agreements so that you owned the copyright to the things that they take that's what you want to dio again or just tryingto keep you avoiding any kind of issues down the line we have a question in the chat room from swing a about royalty free images you may be getting to this but he wants to know if you buy a royalty free images it exclusive to you or will that company be able to sell that image to others too that's a great question it is a great question and the answer is yes they can sell it to other people that's their job that's what they're doing or somebody else could potentially use that same image as their brand as well yes that's true s so you don't use that just to be clear we brought up images because it's a key part of the brand stuff and having imagery usually you would want to remix it with something else perhaps or modified or mash it up with something but you wouldn't use just you wouldn't buy an image and say ha here's my logo I found it because then somebody else is going to use the same picture right golfer album art you know, we have done that he's done that for a number of her. Well, we have and usually you would want to remix it so you would use different types of creature own thing. But, uh, we did way did it all in a day's work, we get a corporate album that's about working in the I like songs. You know, we had a picture of a photocopier that that one was from an image which is a guy. And if a photocopy machine and we used it as is yeah, because we just knew that other corporate companies would be using the same photo and we have, you know, like part it was a little clip for you know, but my favorite are my favorite use that we did of we did a public domain image was the back of santa doesn't like you, which was a picture from a fire house of like, how easy it was for fire like trees in your house to catch on fire so is like a christmas tree on fire and that was in the back and then the front was the public domain image of like a santa but then we modified it to look like an evil santa and the kids on his lap crying and it was awesome wasn't perfectly there's a great examples of how you khun b very creative with these imagery that you have to make it your own. So yes, there was a very old public domain santa he was all happy with the kid and we knew somebody going back to networking who actually knew how to do this and they manipulated santa, so they looked evil and they still was crying and the kid was crying and smiling and then on the back this is a good example of the public domain we found there was just a fire. The station was that just put up these images of this tree christmas tree burning and I like that's perfect for the for the back of of the album, but that's how you should think you can think like that. And then it's it's, you know, you're not paying royalties on all this stuff. We actually had another question come in from johnny boy sure, he asked anything detrimental to using a similar front to another major act. He said he was doing his own research fund research awhile ago and realized that the fund that he liked with copper bold and that's very similar to what the black keys uses that good or bad and why um there's a lot I want to be like there's a lot of cover bands a tribute bands that will use fonts that are very well take the name of their tribute band from a lyric from the band that they're paying tribute to but then they would use the tapes the same type of fun to associate themselves with to make it very clear to people who see their posters and everything that they're a tribute band for the beatles are or what have you if you're trying to be original, however I would I would think that you would want to, you know, go try to do something original as opposed to echo some one of your influences well, that's just my guess that's tuesday that said I mean font sir or foncier out there in the specialized funds are used by other companies to do it. So I think it's great that you did research to find out maybe if somebody else has something similar, then again that can sometimes work for you they're marketing actually might help boost you up because it looks similar enough that it comes together lots of ways to think about yeah and I like the grand theft auto video game has a very distinctive font, but I think I remember doing a research on that and that I thought it was like something it was the same font as the price is right I think if you look at the price is right but yeah and I don't know if they did that on purpose or whatever but like that's how these things work okay? So there you know, but in different contexts and people will just accept the font and that becomes your thing so grand theft auto video game context prices, right? Okay, that's you never make the connection may be that it's the same fine but it's just an interesting aside so avatars today's musicians live online I think there was a question about avatar's earlier. This is the little thing that represents you on things like twitter, where you've got a little image now here's what you need to remember about it images that looks good big may not be even it may be a little blob when you shrink it down so your average tires or kind of unique you're going to need this work quickly than you might think as soon as you do the name and you get the domain name like we talked about. I know we didn't talk about how to get a domain can't cover that here it's in her book but you get a domain the next thing you want to do is reserve the name in his many places as you can twitter being one of them facebook certainly being another as an artist and all the other places you go and think about get that name squatted on the first thing they're going to ask you for is a little tagline bio which we're going to talk about the second but then they'll have okay what's your image that's the avatar it's should be square sized it should look good both big and small if you try and do any writing on it it will end up looking like tiny tiny little blobs underneath so generally advertise usually are very simple easy to look at images that shrink nicely hundred by one hundred pixels is where you should shrink it to you can have it his largest you want before then you might want to play usually like three hundred by three hundred is what you might want to keep it buy pixels by the way for you to buy three hundred so that's how that works a mascot is a very useful little item here and big companies actually have a lot of mascots some of them have just one we have one we are a little turtle iron maiden had eddie the head grateful dead had their skeletons and the dancing bears the's air great merchandise items these you can make so many things out of this stuff they're useful for just about everything you could possibly dio and it can be and often is distinct from the logo which is usually your name which we're going to talk about next it's vector eyes layered image that's the key you want to make it victory ized and layered so that you can and that's also true the mask it by the way so you can resize it it will you could make all the changes to it you can change colors no loss in quality and you might want to incorporate you you are out but the key thing here is that you should use leinart this is the thing that no one talks about when they talk about logos they don't think about making it leinart so what I mean by that is that some people can make their logo and picture of themselves that's good and all but it doesn't resize well it doesn't tend to represent well small as well as large and it's not iconic the I think about I want you to just do this special those of you at home are going to have an easier time because we're just in the studio here there's like these curtains all over the place but take a look around your room and you'll see that the low goes on all the stuff you have generally is leinart it's just very much a representation of something to get you to think of something much more detailed it's a really, really cool technique and there's a reason why this happens actually make a quick call out to a book that I love that talks about this it's called understanding comics if you've never read that book and you like anything about comics or imagery, it talks about how comics actually work which is fascinating and one of the things he talks about is takes actually a quarter and two pennies and puts it on top is like why do we see mickey mouse when we see this it's that iconic and if you could do that with your own imagery it works yes um like lightning like a likening the the images you guys were talking about islam do you know what what people find intriguing or you know that they, uh they really grasp on to like what you're what you're mentioning and yes and if there's any other hints you guys got like I have think about like organ types you know yes, but what archetypes you want actually a lot of times you can do many things along those lines you can hint to something that's already out there that has a connotation and that actually is the way branding people will think they'll say I when I do this I think of this if you're smart with the colors, you could actually use the colors to evoke different moods depending on what you're trying to do because that plays into it and then finally I think this is something that bob baker told us and he told us that about is what your web presences but equally holds true for branding think about the mood you want to evoke when you when people see this right your death metal band there's a certain mood you want to provoke, right? You want to have people feel a certain way, you need to make sure that all the elements put together do that now I wish we could stand up here and tell you how I actually don't know what to tell you there might be I know that people who understand colors know what they're doing talking to the graphic artists that we've interviewed for the book and other things like that there's certain colors that are advancing which means they stand out, they make your eyes go there, and by the way they will use that on web pages but kind of like unfocused your eyes and look att well designed sites they think they even do it on creative live that little button to get you to buy his it's a nice advancing color it strikes you and there's all this stuff around in your eye goes right there there's a lot of tricks you can use it's very it's amazing what goes on underneath the hood this is an area that I wish I could give you ah good book to research this the best thing I can give you is one called the non designers design book by robin williams not that one it's really good about design and basic things that you need to know about how to put these things together. Beyond that that's like the beginner book, the more advanced books are graphic design e books, and I don't know what to recommend from there, okay, any other questions for removing way right now? Okay, one coming from twitter. Ok, well, it was about rebranding we had a couple come in about what your thoughts are for rebranding racist recent said that she had branded herself for dance soul and now wants to focus solely on jazz on their pretty different and jessica on twitter said, what if you're an existing band? What are your thoughts on rebranding csis to similar very similar let's, let's tackle those right when we're through with all the branding elements, and then we'll talk about like, how to put it all together. Those are very good questions, and actually it brings up the key point about brands. This is why they're worth, they're not just worth money, this is why they cost money. If you're thinking about all this and you come over the right color, the folks right mood and you do all this work, it takes time, and then you then it's not even worth anything because it's not anybody's head yet. That's the whole point of a brand that once you get in people's heads then you've got something that's worse something starting over can take some work but let's get there so taglines tagline is a short phrase that captures what you're about coca cola I mean we could think of probably the tag lines of just these major brands that are out there you actually think about it when you look at it create one in advance so it's ready to go and nearly everyone presidents requires a blurb this is a really good place to put it right twitter has a lot of good examples because about all you can put there is a tagline length thing right for song of the day project we use we write songs good that's all we put just to make him think hey we're always writing music and keep coming back because you always have something new but this is the one that probably those of you who were watching the other day have been thinking about how do I think about how I represent myself in a handful of words so that I could convey it I was like using the story here that derek sievers told us on one of our interviews with him where he's like you imagine you're standing in line at the post office and your board because it's slow and there's a businessman sitting that's you decide to make conversation and go ok well dressed businessman what is it that you d'oh he's like? Oh, I do business I do lots of interesting stuff and you know it's business is good and lots of people think it's great and you know what I'm having an open house in my office at three o'clock why don't you come by and you go what do you do? What do you do? And yet we have no problem saying hey, what kind of music do you have? Oh it's great it's it's it's it's a lot of different styles and I really can't classify it too well but it's it's really great and a lot of people love it I have a show tomorrow night why don't you come out it's we started ten o'clock it's the same thing that's not gonna work right? So can you describe yourself in a few words ours this horn power geek rock if you don't like corn power great crack that's ok you'd show up on our show when you decide that this isn't for me and you'd walk away. So your thing is actually you want to cut through and actually hit your audience? In fact, the more people you rule out with your stuff, the more you'll hit you're already your audience directly it's an irony off branding that the more people you are all the better you do I have heard students that we've taught say I my music for everybody and I go really is it going to be for five year olds is it for senior citizens are you going to market in day care centers and senior citizen homes no no no what is it aim it directly at the age group that you want and everything else we're going to talk about marketing and later but for now this is where your music description has to be how would you feel about branding your music with like two or three artists names like we sound like this this and this we love like a mixture that's great it's a great to speak but you still should have yes you're punchy yeah uh music description and you probably don't want to do that forever you might want to do that like that's right the beginning of their inception so you khun kind of that audience who already is predisposed to those bands to actually I should give this one a shot we have both things so we say born power geek rock in the tradition that they might be giants is usually what I usually say for our band and it can actually change I mean we have nineteen albums shamrock is doesn't fit that no it doesn't fit that but that's ok because we have a different tagline for that one it's uh irish pub songs cranked to eleven so it just took these traditional boring is quiet pop songs, and then we kind of rock them up and hand it over born and we had some times we had with the horn section, but we had to sit there and think it took what she will say for this. You will send a long time coming up with copy, and especially when you only have a few words to do it, it matters. And then you have to try it out against a lot of people. And I always know, like, you know, when you hit your audience, when you sense it was like, I love that the key for this is that you want to intrigue them about finding out more. This is goes along with your point borrow use well known artists. Has anybody heard of dreads up one? And then you have is this accurate? Yeah, they play reggae covers of upon people regular radios that ok? So for those of you online, for those of you in line, do this go to go to youtube and some other like back window that you have right now and just search on trade zeppelin find one of their videos and just play a little bit of the song in the background and check it out and tell me if I'm not right on this one, that it sounds exactly like this if you can get to this point it's really great and the point is what I think led zeppelin song by office in front of a reggae backing band and you said it's a very beginning today that what was your description of your music I norah jones and ellie golding had a love child perfect perfect perfect very right ok actually usually on this point it does anybody else want to try and say with their music is because we challenge our audience but now there's cameras on you it's a little bit more than just me say ok, maybe you want to fix that would any of you like to try giving a thought thank you we'll talk a little there thinking like curling his lips and e I don't know it's tough this is harder than it seems try it out against people keep keep tuning you know like trying to tune it more and more see where it goes okay all right. So your bio it's a text of this case your story that's what it is more than anything again the ideas to intrigue the person that's that there's a marketing goal with every bit of writing you do by the way and when I say marketing going we're going to get into this the next time we do marketing which I think is tomorrow for a session tomorrow but the goal of marketing is to get somebody to act and the main action you want when you're talking to somebody presenting this stuff is to get them to find out more otherwise it's stopped there and you haven't you haven't succeeded at your business goal which is eventually to get sales out of it right anyway your story for the press is enough to say ok let me check this stuff out because once they do that they may get interested there's three forms in your bio that you need one page, one paragraph and one sentence we have different bios of ourselves depending on who the audiences when you've been around even longer you're going to do that so if I'm in front of somebody who is for example interested in licensing music I will say something like oh we've licensed music to disney and viacom I don't have to describe our music style yet it's ok you know I could say foreign power geek rock or I could say that we're horn powered band if I want to be even more generic if I'm licensing or you know we compose horn power music we've got our own studio and we've licensed music the disney and viacom establishes us gives just a just that tiny piece of our history for playing live we'd say oh, we've played live all over chicago including places like second city if if we're talking about our music we'd start going down the music description or we'd say something like we've done some of the day project were released one song for every day of two thousand seven, we have nineteen albums, and we've released five hundreds of over five hundred songs, and they go, oh, well, that's interesting, you know, then no, like, well, what do you sound like music description? These are these conversations normally go it's very natural, and yet you don't know how long it took us to get to the point where I could just throw these phrases out have already we've practiced thumb makes sense, right? Okay, way had a response back from somebody in the chat rooms for their band. They said groove metal, olof in terra sort ish that's. Awesome! You know what, let's let's? Throw it out to the to the audience. We'd love to hear yours at the end if we've got any time. So go ahead and share your music descriptions we love to hear it at the end. Let's go. Okay, so you're writing voice your music will suggest what you're writing voices you might be thinking, why should I care about a writing voice? As soon as you have more than one person writing about you, you actually have to get on the same page, it has to sound similar. Large businesses, of course, have to do it. You'd be surprised at how quickly, though, this becomes an issue like even in our little a person band, with other people writing about us, and we had kind of a self effacing style or he made fun of ourselves in it, but we were also kind of jokey, tongue in cheek, and everything couldn't be angry. We couldn't be, you know, there was a certain style that we had to it, and then when other people wrote, without consulting with us and kind of working it out, it became an issue. This is part of your brand as well, and I mean, what we always like to say is that if you write meditation music, you can't be all pissed off and everything, and if you're doing a death metal band, you probably shouldn't sound like you're making meditation music, right? It just doesn't work, and it actually kind of works against your brand and everything else. So you want to make sure that all this all the writers use the same voice in the same style? Yes, you brand yourself like your brand is that you're very experimental. Sure, it turns a lot of different things, absolutely, but if you do that they're going to want to see a new thing from you all the time like lady gaga has to keep topping yourself all the time you say your experimental and your music continues to sound the same doing the same thing you're not going to be able to make that stick very well I mean least that's my thinking on it I could be wrong but I'm just going to suggest that if your thing is I'm always doing something new you better be always doing something new experimental otherwise then you start getting into something that's within a certain zone and you may as well brand yourself inside that your question very good question so your brand tool box this is now you've put all this stuff together you've got all of your bios your three versions of bios you've got your images, you've got all that stuff you want a private section in a public session the public section is so that the press and bookers and everything can just find the images that they need in order to make there advertising materials and marketing materials and just throw it out there right? The press we'll want certain types of images we have another thing for the press we'll talk about it later we're going to talk about p r in the very last day because it actually ties to this making money stuff but the thing is what you khun dio is use things like dropbox of sugars, sugar sync or sky drive and upload the, uh, raw files that you would need so that no matter where you are, if you decide you have a great idea for a t shirt that you could put together an afternoon for a gig that night, you have it available. It's important is another practicality that you might be like why is he telling me this? And then you realize soon as you get involved with all this business stuff, just do this right after you've done making the logo and the brand materials and just make it available to yourself and we love google drive for the bio and things like that because multiple people can edit it at the same time. It's actually very handy for things like that I think pretty much all of our bio materials and stuff like that, isn't it? It's also very searchable you're website should how's your completed brand items basically, you know all the all that stuff clearly label everything and you want to use restaurants flattened rgb files uh for j peg png jif this is all the stuff that's basically public so you have a private part that's, the raw files, the public part that's, the others and once you do all of this, you will have the ingredients for the merchandise