Branding the Band

[neonblack]

Hey everyone! I'm not dead. Instead I've been busy. Writing and playing and all that. Shows coming up, recording shortly after.

This is the most progress I've made in a band and I don't know what to do about a couple things. Namely, finding a band aesthetic/image/vibe when it comes to merch and album artwork.

I want to find a nice, clean, simple font that we can use for our band name/logo on everything to maintain some consistency no matter what imagery we choose across different mediums or whatever. But I don't want to use a font that comes preloaded with every image processing software or whatever. So would I need to pay for a font to get something a little nicer?

Also, when it comes to album artwork, what do you do? I have an image that I want to use but I'm bad with Photoshop and graphic design and all that. I can make mockups but when it comes to making something look finished and polished, I'm at a loss.

My bass player has some design experience but he tends to lean towards and aesthetic that doesn't really fit our sound.

So what do you guys do when it gets to this point?

Also are there any graphic designers here that I could run a thing or two by? I know how much people love to do their job for free.

[actual]

Regarding fonts, I use 1001fonts.com. Most are free to use for personal stuff, while others require you to pay like 10$ for a license to use it for business purposes.

Also congrats on all this, the tides have turned!

[Benn Roe]

Yeah, it's probably worth it to just pay for a font. Most of them are dirt-cheap, and if you buy it you can legally use it for whatever. I've never heard of a band getting into any sort of trouble for using a font illegally (and honestly how the fuck would anyone prove it or even know to come after you?), but for the asking price it just seems worth any risk mitigation it might provide while also being professionally courteous. As for look and aesthetic, I'm probably not much help. I'm not much of a designer, but I usually end up just illustrating and/or laying out everything for my bands anyway. I think a couple of splits my bands were involved in may have involved hiring out artists, or getting a friend to help, but I don't remember the details. Are you guys self-releasing? Or is there a label involved? If the former, do you have any artistically-inclined friends? If there's a label, do they have any friends or go-tos? If your bassist is artistically-inclined and you have an aesthetic in mind, can you just put your heads together? Maybe look through deviantart until you find an artist whose style fits your sound, and then inquire about rates? Good art is worth it if you can afford it. What's your band called? What genre? Maybe people here know artists they could recommend. Daniel Danger's someone I know who has a lot of experience working with bands, so maybe check his work out? I think he also did the art of the OBNE Haunt pedal, by the looks of it.

[gnomethrone]

I use dafont.com for fonts. If you have an image you want to use and your bass player does layout stuff you should be set. I designed a few DIY cut & glue foldout CD sleeves for my old bands and they came out pretty cool. You can find templates for whatever physical media packaging you're gonna go with and then just slap your art and track listing and whatev on there and get them printed.

[neonblack]

So my bass player actually runs a small label. It's mostly surf rock and 50's style pop punk stuff. So he actually has a lot of experience releasing albums and stuff. He's going to put the album out under a subsidiary of his label that he basically created just to sell this album, because he has about a dozen diehard fans that will buy everything he puts out.

We talked a little about it and messed with some stuff. This is what I have in mind for the album. We're going to do a 12 inch with 5 songs on one side and an etching on the other



Rough mockup here, but this is the vibe I'm looking for. We're a noise rock band with emphasis on the rock. Our t shirt design looks much different than this though. Way more metal. But our big show is opening for ASG at their record release show, and they're on Relapse so metal will probably sell.

[the raytownian]

All I can say is "kudos" for not choosing to go with washed out instagram filtered photos and/or dark, low-contrast, two-tone, pseudo-occult youth attack/baby's first black metal aesthetics/imagery for your mockup.

[D.o.S.]

So my bass player actually runs a small label. It's mostly surf rock and 50's style pop punk stuff. So he actually has a lot of experience releasing albums and stuff. He's going to put the album out under a subsidiary of his label that he basically created just to sell this album, because he has about a dozen diehard fans that will buy everything he puts out.

We talked a little about it and messed with some stuff. This is what I have in mind for the album. We're going to do a 12 inch with 5 songs on one side and an etching on the other



Rough mockup here, but this is the vibe I'm looking for. We're a noise rock band with emphasis on the rock. Our t shirt design looks much different than this though. Way more metal. But our big show is opening for ASG at their record release show, and they're on Relapse so metal will probably sell.

This is dope! As are ASG! This will be a good bill if you still sound like those tracks you posted way back when.

Glad you're not dead. Come to Europe. We pay bands here.

[calfzilla]

Congrats man! Love the album artwork. Definitely has more of a noise rock feel than the tshirt.

[neonblack]

This is dope! As are ASG! This will be a good bill if you still sound like those tracks you posted way back when.

Glad you're not dead. Come to Europe. We pay bands here.

Thanks man! Yeah, we sound like that, just faster and tighter haha. We still play the two songs on the Bandcamp but they sound so much better now. And I've gotten a lot more comfortable doing vocals while I play so I went back and reworked some old vocal parts. We have 8 songs finished now with 3-4 on deck.

And I would love to both come to Europe AND get paid to play

Congrats man! Love the album artwork. Definitely has more of a noise rock feel than the tshirt.

Thanks! I want to find a way to keep a similar aesthetic with the shirts. We're going to go ahead and sell our slightly more metal than I would like T shirts at the show and then after we record, try to nail down a visual style.

[neonblack]

https://hearthis.at/mumututu/ration-card-at-reggies/

Low quality bootleg of half of our first show!

[Seance]

Subdued evocative is a good aesthetic (that's what that mockup reads like to me).

If you printed out the font all by itself on a sheet of paper and then put a
blank piece of paper on top and then traced the letters, you would achieve
something that is both uniform and legible but also idiosyncratic and individualized.
Start with pencil, then finish off with Sharpie or markers of your choice.
Even if you don't have a lightbox you can use a piece of glass or even a window
with light on the other side of it to accomplish the tracing.

I trace letters all the time. You can also create a mask and place another visual
in the negative space of the letters. Good clean fun.

I didn't trace letters for this (I was too busy animating glowing flames):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jz_tgmpK2s[/youtube]

I did trace letters for the titles to this animation and then I used that
as a mask for a snippet of animation:
http://www.instagram.com/p/Bg14CY_B-j9/ ... y=seanboke

[odontophobia]

https://hearthis.at/mumututu/ration-card-at-reggies/

Low quality bootleg of half of our first show!

Did you play 69 songs at your first show?

[calfzilla]

any chance of sneaking a neon buffalo onto a design? i'd buy something just for that.

[neonblack]

https://hearthis.at/mumututu/ration-card-at-reggies/

Low quality bootleg of half of our first show!

Did you play 69 songs at your first show?

We played 6-9 songs!

[odontophobia]

https://hearthis.at/mumututu/ration-card-at-reggies/

Low quality bootleg of half of our first show!

Did you play 69 songs at your first show?

We played 6-9 songs!

6-9 on 4/20. niiiiice.