Welcome to Episode 51 of the Bandhive podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross, and I totally didn't have to restart the intro for this podcast. Twice. I am here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona.

How's it going, Matt? I'm doing pretty awesome. James, how are you doing today? Glad to hear that. I am having an awesome week. The day before yesterday. I'm going to nerd out for a second here. I got a piece of metal and it's gonna be a guessing game. It's a piece of metal that goes really fast, and originally in 1995 it sold for, like, 500 something dollars, and I got it for $30 including shipping, and I guess is played Frisbee close. It will cut you up if you stick your hand in it.

It's a jet engine blade, so I'm hurting out. I have a little display here and for anyone listening to the podcast. If you've been a fan for a while, you know I nerd out about planes, so I have, like, model planes and then pieces of plane skin called aviation tags. And then there's just the this jet engine fan blade and I'm like, Okay, that's pretty sick. Didn't you just get some 7 47 speakers as well? Yeah, it was actually in the same shipment. Unfortunately, a 7 47 it was a 7 37 but the good news is, it works.

So now my next project is to make an enclosure for it. So I think a little box around it, and then I can use it in my studio as a mono check speakers. So a lot of people will buy, like the Aven tone Mix cube or something to check their mixes in mono on a you know, crappy little speaker. Instead, I'm gonna have the speaker from the flight deck of a 7 37 to check my nexus on eso Itt's you know, and it's it's not a great speaker but it's not supposed to be.

The point is supposed to be like, you know, if someone's listening on an old boom box or something or like on there smart speaker. I can't say what minds called because it'll wake up, but you get the point. So, yeah, I was in the same shipment. Um, you're very right about that. The fan blade looks much cooler, I have to say, but yeah, that's the That's what's new in, uh, in my life, turning out anything you've been learning out about lately. Oh, I'm just excited for the next season of the man DeLorean.

Oh, yeah, that's dropping. What? Tomorrow day after tomorrow? Let's see, I think in two days is when the first episode will come out. So by the time this episode comes out, it's gonna be like, three weeks from now. Today is October 28th. So, yeah, that's gonna be fun. I stopped to catch up on the first season and see Baby Yoda, but, uh, that does that really awesome. Yeah, you'll have Thio. It's worth it. I can't remember one of the new Star Wars films. One of the new trilogy I haven't seen either it's either.

I think it's the third one I haven't seen yet. You're not missing much. That's fair. But I should probably at least see it so I can critique it and tell everyone else how terrible it is. You can join the ranks. Yeah, exactly. I do have to say I did like, what was the spinoff movie? They did, uh, like the pre prequel. Yeah. So? Or rogue one rogue want? Yeah, that's the one. I did enjoy that one. It was sad, though. I like both of those as well. Yeah.

Anyway, as fun as it is to nerd out about Star Wars and plain stuff, which, hey, I mean, those are both aviation related in a way. Way should probably get to our topic today, which is a topic request by one of our listeners. Apologies. If I butcher your name, I think it's hard like Jamaica. But if I butchered that, I am very, very sorry. Um, but Heartache asked us what it takes to create a visual identity for your band, and so he specifically wanted to hear everything from social media posts to live presentation.

Um, obviously live isn't super vital right now. But we will touch on that, Um, because it will hopefully be important again in the not too distant future. Last I heard was best case scenario. We're looking at summer 2021 for getting back to normal, but, uh, we'll see how that goes. And, uh, so we're going to go over some artists who have great examples off branding and visual identity. And then we're going to talk about what you can do as a D i Y artists to you kind of emulate what the's major artists are doing on Matt.

You had a great example right off the bat when I told you about heartaches. Question. So if you wanna take this one away, Yeah, I'd love to you. So there's obviously so many bands in every part of the industry that do this wonderfully. Generally speaking, the bands who have quote unquote made it are neck deep in their image. You know, this is part of their branding. It's 100% who they are, and you can tell it from every single photo that you see to how they post on Facebook, um, into their music videos.

And so on. Now, one band that instantly stands out to me is the guerrillas. Now the guerrillas are all image. They are a drawn band. They're animated. Every single music video is characters that were made up by two individuals. All the music was written by those two individuals, and they have never been the face of the gorillas. They have always been the business of the guerrillas. You can go and look at every picture they've ever posted every music video they've ever released. You can go look at anything they have ever promoted.

Um, they have a whole bunch of promotion, like animated YouTube videos and things like that. These guys literally hit every single aspect of the marketing world, and they stay 100% consistent with their branding. Each and every one of you as an artist is going to have something that's slightly different from your branding. Let's say we'll use the guerrillas as an example. You want to draw everything. Your art is walking hand in hand with your music, so that needs to stay consistent. But what form can that take? Well, in terms of social media, you can say, Oh, you know, we're gonna have this business professional.

It's only ever gonna be stuff that we draw. And it's only good we're gonna be, you know, really high quality. Or you can turn it mawr forum like and say Like, I'm also gonna have drawing contests. Maybe one of your band members is a tattoo artist. Maybe you can incorporate that somehow. Maybe you incorporate that into your YouTube channel, where, you know, you do sped up videos of somebody at doing, and then you have your music laid over the top of it. There are so many different ways that you can approach this, and the trick is staying consistent with your branding.

Yeah, you're absolutely right about all of that. And you actually sparked a few other artists in my mind who are great examples of effective branding who aren't on the list. We'll get back to the list momentarily, but the first is actually neck deep. E don't think you realized you were making a band reference there, but you did so they have good branding. They have a very defined color palette, but also Frank Carter and the rattlesnakes. Frank, the lead singer, is a tattoo artist, and he does kind of like the classical style of tattoos.

He also happens to do all the art for the band, and it's very branded very cohesive. For their first album, I think it was their first. He actually was doing like Mega Deluxe editions where he did. I want to say 80 different paintings that were all themed for the album, and if you bought the hyper deluxe edition, you would get that painting and it wasn't like a giant painting. I think it was like, you know, like one by 2 ft or something. But that's still big for coming free with an album.

Granted, the deluxe version was probably like 500 bucks or something, but it was very cool to see how. Not only was he using his art for the band, he was also using that to add value and increase their price point so that it was a really cool move on his part. But to go back to our outline here, I really love what Paris did, and for those who don't know them, it's P V. R. E s P virus, known as Paris. They have a really strong aesthetic, and I think that's something that's been around for most of their band's career.

And I know Matt, you've seen them. We were both out there 2015 when they did warped tour for the first time. Not on Lee, where they very branded on stage. They all wore black, their instruments, everything was black. I think Linds guitar might have been white for contrast, which is a great move, but it was just so cohesive with their digital marketing as well. At the time, all their photos were in black and white. Everything was dark and moody, mysterious, which, if you look at their instagram now, they deleted all those old posts and there's a little bit of color now in some of their posts.

But for the most part, it's still kind of dark and moody. That makes me think of another band. You've all heard me talk about them before a F I back in 2000 and six when they put out December Underground. Their entire stage set was white. They had white clothes, white suspenders, white cabs, white drums. Everything was white. It was very, you know, December snow themed and again visual branding. Probably not something that a d I. Y band should attempt or would be able to pull off because, you know, getting custom cab skins and everything.

Like they had a custom powder coated mike made by whatever company. I think it was odd ICS that they were using, so it was quite advanced. But it looks killer. One thing I will say, though, you know, we've played with some D I Y bands over the years that while they weren't necessarily able to have every single thing in their entire set match one single color, they were very easily able to make you focus on something. There's one band in particular. Last time we were in, uh, Ohio, we player at the Thompson House, So I think it's technically in Kentucky.

We played with this band. I can't remember the name, but each one of them had a one either accessory or one article that waas rent. I think what made them choose the color Red is I think the drummer had a red drum set, and so instead of saying, Oh, yeah, we can let's let's pay thousands of dollars for a new drum said that matches this color. Instead, they said, Hey, I'm gonna go buy a red jacket. You go get a red bandana, you go ahead and get a you know where you wear red shoes and a red belt, and they were able to very easily simulate the same thing.

And the singer wore this like, red glittery jacket, and they were awesome. I'll always remember their performance because they really were performers, and that is actually kind of brings us to One of the most important things about your image is how you perform now. This performance can either be live, but right now, obviously, that's kind of on hiatus. And so how about your online performance? How about every single time you get in front of the camera for a live video, or every single time that you decide that you're going to reach out and post a video on your YouTube channel or whenever there's going to be a view into your life?

Because that's what your listeners want. They want to see what you're doing. Whenever they have that view, you need to make sure that you're delivering the cream of the crop. You know, I've said it before. You got to put your best foot forward when it comes to your image. This is how they're going to see you forever. You know, when they when they think about going to your show, This is how they're going to go. You know, this is how they're gonna to view you on stage.

So while you're out and about, go to the stores are actually before you go to the stores. What you should do is you should look up your favorite bands in your industry. You should see what they're wearing. You should see if it's Band T shirts. I'll help you. It's not. You should see if they're wearing logos on their clothing. They're not your favorite. Artists aren't wearing shirts that say Abercrombie and Fitch across the chest. They're not wearing, you know, Adidas shoes. Now a case could be made for rappers as rappers can.

You know a lot of the time they rap about the clothes that they're wearing. You know, I have my Jordans on like that's kind of clout in certain industries. And so that's why I say it's important for you to just go ahead and check out what your favorite artists are doing. See what they're wearing, you know, If you're a folk band and you are wearing all black and all of your music super peppy, the image doesn't really correlate with the music. And so your branding is going to feel a little weirder.

But maybe if you're a Goths folk band, maybe those black clothes woodwork and so you know it's gonna be a like I keep saying it's gonna fit in line with your branding. But you know, which is what your music should be doing. You know your music should emulate your branding. Those two things are the same thing. What you're singing about is part of your branding. And so if you're singing this God folk music, well, yeah, Now maybe you go find some black flannels and, uh, you know, a dark bowler cap and, you know, or something like that, or if you're a country artist, you know, a country artist wearing skinny jeans and a leather jacket might not fit, but cowboy boots and a cowboy hat that definitely makes more sense.

So make sure you know what music you're playing. Make sure that music follows your branding and then make sure that that image both fits what the music sounds like and fits with the branding. Like James said earlier, If you're in a metal band, black, skinny jeans, that's awesome. You know, you wanna wear a leather jacket that looks good. I highly encourage eye makeup. You know, I make up, makes your eyes pop. And it's been, you know, artists have been using it for, you know, and performers have been using it for centuries.

It's literally the most important thing in stage performance is how the artist as a whole is made up. You know, artists that are competing at the highest levels of the game, they literally say things like, I have to go get ready because they're getting ready for work. When you goto work at McDonald's, you go when you put on your uniforms. You have a uniformed here, too. That's the most important thing you need to realize. Is that your uniforms? Man, there's some artists that I worked for that wouldn't leave their tour bus until they had, like, done their hair and done all their makeup and make sure the exact right close that they had on.

We're good and you know what they are in the industry. They're succeeding they're making a consistent paycheck, and they have been for years. And so if you want to play the game, then play the game, put your best foot forward, see what your favorite artists are doing and emulated. Yeah, and there's one other advantage. One big advantage for you personally. If you have a separate set of stage clothes, and that is that if you change your clothes before you go on stage and immediately when you come offstage, you're not going to smell 24 7, because when you're on tour, you can't do laundry that often.

So if you're only wearing your sweaty stage clothes for an hour every day, that's an advantage, because then you can change into clean clothes. Or at least you know less dirty clothes and not be a smelly and honestly, later on, we're gonna have an episode where we talk about different, like pieces of hardware and things like that you can take on tour that actually help you out a lot, like there are actual portable, uh, clothes washers where you can just pour a bunch of water into a bucket and put that in there and pour some soap on it with your dirty clothes and it'll run like a 10 minute spin cycle and actually clean your clothes on the road.

There's some crazy stuff. We'll do an episode about that later, but I wanted to let you know. Don't smell bad on tour. Yeah, things like that are awesome. A personal favorite of mine is the solar shower bag, where you fill up a bag of water and the sun heats it up. Obviously, I wouldn't do that in winter, but you know, if you're on a summer festival or something, it works out great. But yeah, I'm at another off outline artist that I thought of on and actually banned hive group member.

I was talking to Rick from the riders the other night. He had some questions about promoting their new E P. They have really strong branding their a psycho Billy horror punk. Uh, I forget what other words they used to describe themselves banned from San Diego in Southern California, and they all wear black, except the lead singer has a bright pink shirt with black suspenders, and then the rest of the band all have pink ties or bow ties, and that fits in perfectly with their digital branding. Their site is black and pink.

Their social media is black and pink. It was very conscious what they did, and I think that's awesome, because they are a D. I y band, you know, and they have a lot of potential, but they're not where Paris or gorillas or any of the other bands we've mentioned are. But they are very consciously putting that effort in, and I think that's awesome. So shout out to Rick and the riders. Thanks for being members of the Bandhive community. Keep up the good work, guys, you know that.

Actually, I think that brings us into perfect next point. That's color palette. You mentioned that they stay consistent, that their instagram their social media's, you know, their their album art. It's black and pink, and that's what they wear on stage. Their live performance emulates the branding that they spent a bunch of money on. And so that's the consistency that you need to have So good job doing that, guys. And it's actually a great thing to focus on his color palette. When you have an album and you have an album art, you're going to take that album are, and you're gonna use that as digital art as well.

So whatever colors you're gonna be using on that that's gonna be your color for the next while or as long as your album cycle is. This is really important. Whenever a large artists starts to promote either a single or an album, you'll notice that graphic work on all of their social media's is changing. New marketing tactics are constantly being implemented. But for a majority of artists, you know you have some sort of small promotional video or even just, uh, you know, somebody will black out their social media for a couple days or something like that, and they'll post a date and things like that.

You'll notice that the colors and things like that when they come back all emulate the album art from the single. And maybe that single has something to do with lyrics. Um, you know, and those colors maybe, you know, color has a has a strong correlation with emotion, and so people having you know, when they see certain colors, they think they have natural feelings. Ah, lot of those colors, if you are really paying attention to what you're doing. If you're songs light and bubbly and you have pinks and reds and you know, and and these remote, brighter colors, it's like they make people happier.

If you you know and you have a gloomy song like James was saying earlier, it's all about having dark and gloomy colors. So, like you know, you want your blues and and these, you know, deep rich colors and with a darker palette. When you then transfer those over to all of your social media's, that should also translate to your stage presence as well. Now, this could take many forms. You might you know, James was talking about having metal cut. I've actually seen. One time I saw a skylight drive.

They had regular stage set up regular stage plot, but they had had some ironworker basically cut out a city skyline that also said their name and that they just set in front of their cabs. And so all you could really see was the silhouette of a city. But it was very well done, and it was a very simple thing that they could just slide in front of their cabs, and it worked well for when they weren't headlining because it wasn't this big, huge stage build. And it wasn't, you know, didn't they Didn't have to roll in a day earlier, like, you know, And just so people know, like when large artists tour like when breaking Benjamin goes to Spokane, Washington, their crew gets there a day beforehand and they spend one whole day setting up the lights in the stage.

And then they play the next day, and then they go to the next city and then spend a whole day setting up lights and stage. Because everything is, it's a performance. It is planned to a t. So to answer your question in a very long way, there's no wrong amount of preparation. It depends on what level of performer you want to be. Michael Jackson was said to have practiced his spin for eight hours a day, just his spin, and Michael Jackson is known as one of the greatest performers to have ever walked the planet.

So I'm not saying that you should, you know, practice. You know, one thing for eight hours, you know that he also, you know, came from a pretty troubled childhood where he was forced to practice a lot. But the point is, he practiced at a level that was greater than everybody else. And so then when it came time to get in the game, he competed at a level that was different than everybody else. And he consequently had the largest record deal $300 million record deal, which absolutely ridiculous. And so how hard you practice and how hard you know how focused you are on your image, you know?

And on top of that, if you think about Michael Jackson, it wasn't just he didn't just have the dance moves and the singing. He also had the image he also had his black outfit with, You know, the I think I believe, is a white ribbon around the hat to match his white glove. He stayed consistent with his branding. The imagery was there and then, on top of that, the parts that you would naturally focus on were like the parts that he would overly accentuate. A J. R is another band who their live performance is fueled by Lights E. Ramstein.

They've had branding that's consistent with they have text that run out literally on fire, and so they stay consistent. You know, they have music videos with a lot of fire in them. And, you know, that's a very simple image branding, but name one other band that came out of Germany. I bet you can't do it. I don't count because I know too many e better advantage your Germans sh USH. But that's the thing is they stay consistent with their branding tool. You know, Go look at every single tool album art.

They all follow the same branding. It's all this very trippy, you know, kaleidoscope, you know, and it's all very dark. And if you listen to the lyrics of Tool, they're all very gross and and depressing, and it fits perfectly. If Tool put out an album that was pink and had flowers on it, you'd be like, well, in the world. This is so strange. This is why you know, whenever a band changes like style quite drastically, like I remember one time here I think it was like seven dust.

I heard like seven dust. You know, when I was really young and then, like 10 years later, I heard a seven dust long and then I was like, That was seven dust like they went from, like, being way heavier, like being this like light rock band, you know. And it was shocking because it just didn't seem consistent with their branding. They branded themselves as this much heavier band earlier, and then they got a lot lighter bands that can actually stay consistent with their sound for a long period of time, get a lot of respect.

But they also get a lot of hate. Look at Metallica. There's a very fine line to walk. The thing is, they stay consistent with their image. You know, Metallica has never stopped being Metallica. People just have gotten bored of them. And so you know, they're so rich that people want to hate on him. Stay consistent with your branding. But to do that, you have to first identify exactly what your brand is. Yeah, I love what you're saying and you know, that reminds me of a few years ago taking back Sunday, put out a song that sounded exactly like against me.

I remember the first time I ever heard it. I was in hot topic, and I said to the person working there Oh, is this the new against May? I didn't know they were putting something out and they said, No, let me check And they came back like, No, this is taking back something like That's not taking back Sunday like no, literally like it's a taking back Sunday CD, it says, taking back Sunday And like it sounds exactly like against me, you know, down to the vocals like It sounds like Laura Jane Grace the music.

It's like against me, his guitar tone and everything. The song is called Tidal Wave, so it'll be on our show notes. Or you can, you know, find it on Spotify, YouTube wherever and then compare it to against me. And I'm pretty sure you'll be like, what? Because it sounds nothing like taking back Sunday. I mean, it's a cool song. I like it, but it's like, Yeah, you kind of ripped off against may not just a little bit like it literally sounds like you are now against May, so it's interesting to see when things like that happen.

But, yeah, you're absolutely right. Artists who change their sound. We'll lose a lot of fans, and I know you've talked about this in the past like Bring me the horizon, You brought them up and how they changed gradually enough that most of their fans stuck with them and some didn't. But then they released a song about the fans who didn't like their music anymore. Because it ain't heavy metal, you know. So that's awesome. You know, you're calling them out directly. Um, Ramstein. They've changed their sound over the years, but it's close enough that no one's really complained.

You know, like you mentioned their logo. It's been the same for 25 years. That's consistent branding. And I think part of it is just that they had really good branding from the start. It's these six big, well, five big German dudes, ones skinny and awkward looking. But he is the keyboardist, so get on you flake for being different. But then they'll go out on stage and they're all like, covered in grime. That's part of their look. It is not a musical performance, it is a theatrical performance, and I think that makes a big difference to, you know, local bands will say, Oh, yeah, I'm gonna go play a song.

It's like, Have you rehearsed how you're going to interact on stage. Do you know who's gonna be wear on stage at each point of each song? And for Hammerstein, that's especially important because if they're in the wrong spot, they're going to get hurt by flamethrowers or Pitta or something like that. And I mean, that's happened, Teoh. You know you mentioned Metallica. James Hetfield got burned by pyro in Montreal in like, 1994 and they canceled the show and it started a riot. You have to be aware of where you are on stage, especially when you're dealing with fire and dangerous things like that.

But it also helps your performance. So if you know you and your band can say, Hey, at this point, we're all going to do a jump or at this point we're all going to do a span or whatever it is choreographed things like that and just move. Get out from behind your microphones. I remember one of the coolest things I ever saw was the unseen, which is a small time, I mean, not small time. They're well known in the community, but they're not massive punk band from I think Boston and I saw them.

And, uh, this was House of Blues Boston, which is a massive stage. I think it's like 50 ft wide or so, and their two guitarists swapped sides on the stage and, as they were coming back, went the opposite way and hook their guitar chords, and they just looked at each other and cracked up because they had been planning it. But they didn't think of the guitar chords tangling. So they looped back around, went back, and it's like first of all, that shows that they knew that they were going to do that.

They planned it, But they're also still having fun. They weren't like, upset at each other for getting tangled up there like Oh ha ha, That was great, you know, So things like that you want to also have your personality be an extension of your branding. Now, I'm not saying go out and be someone you're not, because that's not gonna work. But your branding should, in a way, fit your personality. If you are writing heavy music, that's dark. That's probably the kind of mindset you're in, too, So it shouldn't be too difficult now.

I'm not saying be a jerk. I'm saying fit that. So you know, if your aesthetic is dark, maybe your personal instagram should have dark, moody images to you can still be nice to people. You can interact with them, but it should be somewhat consistent from the band level to a personal level as well. You brought up some absolutely awesome points, James. I even hate to bring this up because I love taking back Sunday so much, but we're gonna rag on them again. Eso Adam has always been a mike swinger.

It's actually he is branded as a Mike Swinger. My very first concert that I ever went to was taking back Sunday Cyprus Hill in Blink 1 82 and at like age 14, I was blown away at this guy on stage. He was swinging his mic like, 20 ft away from him, and I thought it was crazy. He was branded so well, but they didn't have this even homed in in the slightest of ways. And on one tour, Adam Lazara hit their guitarist in the head with the microphone, knocked him unconscious.

They were going to have to cancel the show. But luckily, a fan who knew all of their songs came and played this show. The guitarist was taken to the hospital and later on, This is the silver lining. This is the good that comes from it. And this is how you can tell. You know, what makes a band from the bands that don't succeed is they made a tour shirt about it. Their tour shirt was a white shirt, which is what they're Guitarist was wearing with blood on the front of it.

You know, that was the print. The print was like the blood that can't you know, because he got hit in the head and that was their tour shirt sold a ton of shirts. Consequently, for those of you who know the beef between brand new and taking back Sunday, there's a lot of history there. Jesse Lacy, also being an incredible businessman, said, I'm gonna make a T shirt because when they had their falling out, he went off and started brand new, and he also made a T shirt that said Mike's air for singing, not for swinging on.

That was a T shirt that brand new salt and all of the people that knew this historical beef between the two of them were instantly drawn to it. So, as's faras, you know, like there's a million in one ways that you can bring yourself. You know, there's a million in one way that you can present yourself. It's just you know it. Like James said, It has to have, you know, like bits of your personality in there. You have to have your own flair and pizazz. The fans found out about the beef between them, and so they played into that instead of ignoring it.

Guess what people talk about drama. They like drama. Don't believe me. Look at keeping up with the Kardashians get you know, the Jersey Shore like look at any reality TV show look like H G T v. Thes. People are literally remodeling houses and they find a way every episode to be like, Oh, no, this wall is too big. What are we gonna do? You know, it's like people feed on that. And so if you know that people are gonna feed on that, then in a positive, uplifting way, that's not going to destroy other people.

Use that to your advantage. If people are going to talk about this story, and it's something that you're okay with talking about. Then talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to learn more about the story of taking back Sunday and Adam clocking their guitarist with the mic, Fred Mazzarino, who was in the band at the time, did a really fun interview with lead singer syndrome podcast about a year ago. They talked about that specific thing, and apparently the backstory is the previous show. They had had some tech issues and stopped, and after the show, I think it was Adam or one of the members said.

We do not stop the show ever for anything. And in the very next show is when the other guitarist got hit in the head and Fred's just like, Well, we're not stopping eso eso you know that Z Yeah, Soon as you brought that up, that reminded me. So if anyone wants to hear that story firsthand from Fred, who was there, he is the or was the lead guitarist at the time. You could go check that out. Amazing interview overall and his other bands like I've been a terrible things fan for a decade now, and that that was his band after taking back Sunday.

And they're so good, man, it really shows to that. Fred kind of was the heart and soul of taking back Sunday during that era just because that he defined their sound for those two albums louder now and whatever the one before that was, he was their sound, and Adam was their image like 100%. Everybody in the industry wanted to look like Adam Lazara. Yeah, and that's why they're sound was so different for Tell All Your Friends and is so different after a louder Now you know their first album when their subsequent you know, fourth further albums.

Because Fred's not in the band Fred, from everything we heard in that interview was not happy, either. But that's a totally another story You could check out complaint or by the color Fred, which is about his time in taking back Sunday. But yeah, a great interview in a great podcast to lead Singer syndrome. It's by Shane told who is the singer of Silverstein? Great stuff. I definitely recommend checking it out, but yeah, so to wrap things up, it's really all about consistency. So you know Matt, you mentioned your color palette should be consistent.

If you want to create branded images easily, you can use something like Canada now. Canada is not going to let you strip out all the color from an image except for you know, the pink shirt or something. You'll need somebody who knows photo editing software to do that. But if you're just trying to make a quick graphic promoting your album, you could easily go into Can Va choose the colors that fit with your album art and put something together and put it out there. So look at neck deep on Instagram.

For some examples of that, they have some really cool imagery, which I don't know if they did. There's in Canada, but you could certainly recreate something similar for yourself using Can Va. Another thing that we haven't really touched on but we kind of have with the personality is your copy should fit your brand. So this is the text that goes with your social media posts. It should all be consistent with who you are. So shout out to another listener of the band. I've podcast Bradley, which is with a six, so it's six Radley, but pronounced Bradley, he has really on point copy.

That just fits his personality so extremely well. It's really aggressive, but also the kind of like attitude of like, I don't care like whatever. I don't care, you know? And that fits so well with his whole aesthetic. I love it. Obviously, that style will not work for most people. It's great for him. But for most people, don't try that. It would be terrible for like, ah folk band Thio use that kind of attitude Be really funny And maybe the humor of it would work for a little bit.

But, you know, you know who your audiences know what they're expecting from you and make your copy fit that. Matt, this is something you brought up checking your spelling. I think you had a little story about that. I dio Yes. Now we got lucky. I proof read every single person in our band's liner notes and you know, we condensed it. We made it so that it would all fit under the number of panels that we had paid for. And everything on the inside was absolutely great. Fantastic.

Um and then we got our copy. And then we realized one of the song titles was overlooked. Now I said, we got lucky. We did get lucky. What happened was one of our songs was plural, and Annette s was left off. Now, luckily for us, it still made sense. Without the s, we got really, really lucky. But it was that pit in our stomach of saying, Oh my gosh, we literally just paid, like, thousands of dollars to get all of this taking care of. And then we missed an S. We missed a single letter where everybody sees two on the back of the album.

It wasn't even inside. It wasn't even this small tiny font. Now it was like, Oh, yeah, like, look at this track three. But you know, and I've seen I mean, I've seen everything misspelled. I've seen band names, miss built. I've seen merch with misprints on it. I've seen, you know, like my own song Missing an s. And so it's really important that not only you proof read everything that's going to be published, but also try to have somebody that's not in your group proof. Read it. I mean, you don't necessarily have to dio for your social media posts.

Just make sure that you know you have proper spelling. Good punctuation, capitalization. Don't be a slob. Stay consistent with your branding. Like, for instance, Bradley. He uses a six. Or if every time he made a Facebook post instead of using a B, he used a six that would stay consistent with his branding. Now, obviously it's gonna vary. You know, if you did that and you don't have any sort of numbers in your name or no point of origin for that to make any sense at all to your fan base, then that's not going to do anything.

It's not gonna be beneficial to you, so you know, I sound like a broken record. But identify your branding. Stay consistent with that, does it for another episode of the band I've podcast. Thanks so much for listening this week and every week. I hope this episode gave you some ideas about how you can improve your band's branding. It really is so important and consent bands apart amazingly, and as much as I hate to say it personally, I think branding is almost as important as the music because yeah, you know what people will like your music.

They might love your music, but branding is what will help you get your stuff out there. So having good, consistent branding is really key to having a career in music. If you wanna learn more head on over to our Facebook group, you can either search for us on Facebook or visit better dot band slash group in your browser to be automatically redirected to the Facebook group. We have a great community of over 400 musicians and artists there who are willing to share their experience their expertise with anybody who has questions.

So please feel free to join us. We'll be back with another brand new episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time. Until then, I hope you have an awesome week. Stay well and, of course, as always, keep rocking.