Creating merchandise for my website.

Every successful artist has some form of merchandise, this is an important part of the branding and marketing for a musician as it creates something that is collectable for fans.

I used the website vista print (http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/) to create prototypes for hoodies, hats and t shirts. I know from my experience with fashion that these will be the most popular items. I tried to make them stylist and cool, I really like the embroidered hats and jumpers.

I also included shirts with Jem's face on it, as these will also appeal to the younger 'fangirls'.

Once I created the prototypes through vistaprint I put the images on my website using the 'store' tool on Wix.com, here I set the prices for the merch, this was based on looking at the prices of merchandise similar to mine from other musicians.

Adding tour dates to my website.

Today I added tour dates to my website for the upcoming tour for my artist Jem Nash.

I did this through Jem's facebook page, which I have been working on.

For each gig I put in the venue and the date, and the name of the tour named after his best known single off the album also named 'OCEANS'.

Once the dates are added on the facebook page, I can easily transfer them though the website.

The second image shows the tour dates now that they have been tranferred onto my website, I really like how professional it looks.

Using Twitter for audience feedback.

Designing my album cover.

This was my first prototype for my album cover using art which I sourced on the internet. I really liked the typewriter feel and the colours, however to link it in with the album name 'oceans' I wanted something that mirrored that slightly, thats why I prefer the use of Danny's art, which looks like an ocean, with the added aspect of the spraypaint which adds a cool urban vibe to the album cover, so as to not only appeal to the fangirls. I will put pictures of Jem inside the digipak to appeal to the younger 'fangirl' audiences.

When choosing the font, I wanted to go with something cool and contemporary, so as to fit in with other indie bands but also be eye catching when sitting on a shelf in a shop. I went with this cool understated font, as I already thought that the album cover artwork spoke for itself in the terms of being cool and eye catching. I kept a similar format from the mock that I did first, as I thought that this worked well, though I believe that my final outcome was an improvement and perfect for the image that I am going for.

Commissioning an artist for my album cover.

As explored when making the mock up for my digipak, I really like the idea of using a piece of abstract art for my album cover, which I will then match with a photo shoot of Jem (using the same colour palette etc.)

I want something that looks professional, as I am not very competant at painting or producing abstract art, I decided to look for an artist which I can comission to create some abstract. This is something that would happen usually in the music business. An example of this would be the album artwork of Royal Blood's self titled debut album. The work was from it was a work called ‘Falls’ by Dan Hillier inspired by Victorian etchings and a strong example of his surrealist art. 

"Born in 1986 and raised in Hackney, Danny studied Fine Art at the University of East London and completed his printmaking MA at the Royal Collage of Art in 2014. Danny's work deals predominantly with ideas of identity and gender and how it is portrayed in today's society, be it male, female, transgender or homosexual. Playing with a narrative which starts out as hope, quickly becomes a hegemony of power and a carnival of vice. In regards to love and family Danny's work leaves the viewer both with a sense of what could have been and with a sense of how those feelings have been distorted by gender politics."

Danny is a friend of mine who is also an artist, his work is perfect for the audience of Jems music and very 'on trend' - it will relate to the hipster art fans who also listen to indie music.

Here are some examples of his work:

Photoshoot: part two - studio shoot.

The next set of photos that I need is some pretty standard studio shots to use for the website.

I took some portraits in front of a shite background which I plan of putting in black and white to use for the biography section of my website.

I also played around with using Jem's headphones and taking some more 'fun loving' ones to shows Jems personality.

Overall I was really happy with the outcome of the shoot.

Outcome of the photoshoot!