Back in December we were recruited to be part of a project put together by Michael Devaney and the crew at Little Skull Photography. The idea was for a group of artists and professionals from many different disiplines to converge on December 21st, 2012 to create a work to commemorate the end of the world, as many were predicting as part of an ancient mayan prophecy. Clearly we’re still here some months later, along with the result of our efforts: Muertos – A collection of photographs and a micro-documentary of a woman transformed into a calavera, or Mexican sugar skull.

The project was produced at The Studio of Photographic Arts (SOPHA) in Manchester NH, and featured the talents of photographer Michael Devaney, as well as his wife Joslyn, who comprised the Little Skull Photography crew. Hair styling was done by Michelle Light of Ashley Christopher Salon, and prosthetics and special effects makeup were created and applied by Ben Bornstein of Creative Initiative FX Studio. The dress was created by Rana X of fashion label ExplorationB.

We had alot of fun filming and producing this project, and the core Heavy Digital team was assisted greatly by the talents of James Perilli, Jeremy Blaiklock and Alex Braga.

Our hope is that this project will serve it’s purpose of highlighting the creative talents of the local creative community, and I for one feel we achieved this goal!

If you are only interested in the standard specifications for YouTube uploads they can be found here, but while I fully understand that these are optimal settings for home users and hobbyists, as professionals we must strive to achieve the highest possible quality, even at the cost of convenience. YouTube’s Advanced Encoding Specifications do a very good job of laying out exactly how all of their high-end enterprise content providers make their videos that seem that much better than the rest, and it has the added benefit of coming straight from the horses mouth.

We’re firm believers in eating our own dog food, and we’ve been using this on our client sites, as well as our own, testing, optimizing and revising this plugin to make it as user friendly as possible.

Currently the SideOffer feature set includes easy and interactive setup and positioning with real-time visual feedback, anchor link triggering via inclusion the `sideoffer` class and custom background graphics (PSD source included!)

Check it out and please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions, comments or feature requests you may have!

You can download the plugin from the official WordPress plugin repository here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sideoffer/

I suppose this shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to anyone, and frankly, I welcome the change. I’ve always had a love of film, and more specifically cinema; there’s something special about the look of film, with the shallow depth of field resulting in beautiful bokeh, saturated colors, the fine grain and everything else that makes up the cinematic experience. The catch is, that for the most part, the industry has been moving away from film for years, proving over and over that digital is here to stay.

We’ve all heard about the cameras that RED has been putting out, but a slightly quieter revolution has been brewing with the usage of DSLR still cameras, which in recent years have started being equipped with Full 1080p HD video capabilities.

As I said, I love the look of film, and I don’t have to lose that just because film cameras are no longer being produced. Thankfully, with technology rapidly changing, DSLR cameras with CMOS sensors have enabled everyone to have the ability to record film-quality video with a wide range of options available. My current rig, a Canon EOS 60D with a set of prime lenses, including a Tokina 11-16/2.8 AT-X 116 PRO DX Ultrawide, a Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM Wide and a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM Standard give me that beautiful bokeh, while post-production software like Red Giant Magic Bullet Suite allows me to dial in the look of any number of film stocks. The cost of all of this gear is minuscule when compared to a full film camera setup, even before you consider the cost of buying and processing reels and reels of film stock.

It’s also important to note that the CMOS sensor in a 1.6 crop sensor camera is roughly equivalent to a frame of Super 35mm film, as show in the chart to the left. This is why you’re starting to see many independent and small to mid-size production houses utilize these DSLR cameras for their shoots, as they are highly cost effective and allow significant savings to be passed along to the client which is a huge bonus in today’s competitive marketplace.

Truth be told, there are some drawbacks to using a DSLR as a video platform, because there are limitations due to the fact that it isn’t a fully featured camera. In the future you will see a whole new generation of video cameras with large CMOS sensors, as well as all of the features we already associate with professional video cameras, including XLR inputs, zebra striping, longer record times, etc. One of the early cameras of this nature to hit the market is the Canon XA10. Of course, this isn’t without it’s drawbacks, as it uses the AVCHD codec, which is not ideal for processional videography wor, and the lack of interchangeable lenses is a negative for many. That said, it’s still a wonderful camera and is just a preview of things to come.

It’s good to see the big boys like Panavision and ARRI joining the digital bandwagon. Now, the only question, at least for me, is when the dust settles, will we still call it filmmaking?

It’s funny sometimes how much synchronicity there is in our lives. A couple weeks ago I was perusing the StudioPress Developer Resources and happened across a couple articles, How to Use the Genesis Grid Loop and Genesis Grid Loop Advanced, which explained the finer points of the new Grid Loop in Genesis 1.5.

As it was, I also happened to have a client project at the time which required a grid type layout for some posts in various templates. The site was fairly complex, with multiple templates required for different parts of the site, and my approach was to have multiple widget areas to display the Genesis Featured Pages & Posts widgets. This was all well and good for the list type display elements, but unfortunately the plugins didn’t have the capability to display anything other than that, and I had been racking my brain trying to figure out what I could do to address this issue. Needless to say, seeing the grid tutorials was quite fortuitous.

My first instinct was to search around and see if StudioPress or anyone else had already developed a grid plugin. Unfortunately it seems that one hasn’t been rolled out yet. I could have hard coded the grid formatting into the theme, like in the tutorials, but I’m not a big fan of reinventing the wheel, and it seems that there is potential for this to be reused over and over again, so I decided to create a widget.

The plugin itself is really straightforward. It’s based on the code from the Genesis Featured Posts plugin, but has been modified to assign odd and even style classes to each post, and inserts a new style sheet reference into the header with the proper CSS for aligning the grid. Simple yet elegant. If you’d like more information click over to the Genesis Featured Grid page I set up here.

I’ve submitted it to the WordPress.org Plugin Respository, so feel free to download it and give it a whirl. It requires the Genesis Framework already be installed on your server, and if you don’t have it, you may purchase it directly from StudioPress.

As I said, it’s pretty basic right now, and is limited to two posts across. I intend to update it in the future to allow the user to select different grid sizes, but alas, more client work calls first.

As with all Genesis Framework content, it is released under the GPL, so tinker with the code to your hearts content. I’d love to see what you come up with!

I really love getting feedback, so please feel free to post any comments or suggestions for future revisions below!

Download Now

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/genesis-featured-grid

This is intended for the you, the end user, to guide you through the basics of adding and editing posts and pages on your new site.

Note to Clients, Fellow Designers and Developers: This guide is a work in progress. Please comment or email me and provide feedback on how this can be improved. If you need to know something that is missing here, please let me know!

Required Information

• Admin URL – The address provided to you for site maintenance. (http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/)
• Username & Password – We will provide this to you

Topics

• The Dashboard – Your Website’s Home Base
• Posts & Pages – Creation and Updates

The Dashboard

The WordPress Dashboard is the home base of your website, and provides information and links to control various aspects of your website.

Posts & Pages

The content that is seen on your site can be divided into two categories: “Posts” and “Pages“. They behave similarly to each other, but there are some differences that should be understood.

Posts are the bread and butter of most WordPress installations. They are used primarily for more fluid forms of content, such as blog entries, new updates, articles and other items that are meant to be displayed at a certain period in time and then superceded by new information.

While posts are fluid, Pages are static. They are utilized for content that stays unchanged over time, such as an About Me page, biographies, contact information and other things of that nature.

Today, I want to talk about something sort of dry, but something that I find is often overlooked. Lightbulbs.

That’s right, lightbulbs.

As a visual artist producing through a fully digital workflow, I pay very close attention to the images on the screen in front of me, and I’m sure the same is true for you. I also spend a great deal of time working from my home office, so it should be no surprise that for a long while, I had regular CFL lightbulbs throughout my house, including my office. Makes sense right?

What never occurred to me for a long time was the way home lighting was affecting my work. You see, “normal” home lights give off a very unnatural cast, and as such really aren’t suitable for any type of visual work. I mean, we spend hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars on monitors, calibration tools and software, color correction filters, and other countless items to ensure the images on screen represent the images on the television or the printed page, yet, if you are like I was, the lighting in your office was less than stellar, but even moreso, was working to undo all of the meticulous calibrations and calculations you have done.

I came to this revelation while talking to my friend, who had invested in some natural light bulbs, not for the reasons listed above, but rather because he found himself suffering from a pretty severe bout of the winter blues, and if you’ve been in Boston anytime this winter I’m sure you could commiserate. He got some of the full spectrum bulbs, and has felt devoid of the winter blah’s ever since.

As soon as we had this conversation a lightbulb went off (See what I did there?). After doing some research, I decided to invest in some Phillips 5000K Full Spectrum Bulbs, and the difference is astounding.

I still have “normal” CFL bulbs in an adjacent room, and looking out the door of my office the other room has a very noticeable orange cast, while my office is purely lit by white light. As an aside, while it is difficult to quantify, I definitely feel better overall than I did with traditional lighting, so maybe there’s something to this full spectrum thing beyond the benefits to visual artists.

While alot of the major design studios have long known this, I feel like it’s something that slips past us sometimes, and a small investment can go a long way in improving your work, as well as your demeanor. Try it out, and you’ll see your work, and your world, in a whole new light!

Club Hell Flyer

Having been in the Boston music scene for the better part of 15 years, I’ve seen more than my fair share of concert flyers. Few things can take my breath away like a crisp, well designed flyer that not only promotes an event, but is a work of art in it’s own right. Truly, artists like Frank Kozik, Jermaine Rogers and James Rheem Davis exhibit artistry that should have (and have) been included in some of the most prestigious galleries in the world! With that being said, it pains my heart to say that about 95% of the flyers I have seen in my life SUCK.

Bad Flyers

Believe me when I tell you I’ve seen it all, from flyers with just block text, to ones scribbled out on notebook paper and colored in with crayon. Do you really think so little of your band that you can’t take the time to make a decent flyer? You would think that with the advent of computers becoming a household item, and the ready availability of graphic design programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (Or Free Software alternatives The Gimp and Inkscape, if you don’t have the money to plunk down) that even the lowliest basement shows would have a passable flyer associated with them. This has not been the case, and in fact, quite the opposite has happened. If one were to be interested in the fundamentals of design, all they need do is look at the electronic flyers posted all over the comments section of myspace and understand that the exact opposite is pretty much in the ballpark of good design.

A well designed concert poster should have a certain fluidity of design: There is a limited amount of real estate to work with, and alot of information to get across: Day, time, venue (including the complete address), price, age limit and other bands playing… Whew! On top of that, there it should all be tied together with a complementary color scheme, and there should be enough space left over for an eye catching graphic. Now, I know that most of you aren’t graphic designers, but still, it’s not difficult to come up with something sharp looking, and even if you feel it’s a bit bland, remember that sometimes less is more, and simplicity is beautiful.

Midway Cafe Flyer

To sum up today’s lesson, please take more than 5 minutes to create a half decent flyer. Ask the bands on the bill for high resolution copies of their logos, or search them out on the web (Who doesn’t have a MySpace these days, at the very least?). If you truly believe you aren’t capable of creating something that isn’t completely hideous, do yourself a favor and find someone who can. Everyone knows someone who is an artist, or at the very least adept at using simple computer graphics applications. Worst case scenario hire someone to do it for you; trust me, it will be to your benefit in the end.

Speaking of which, now seems like a good time for some shameless self-promotion (stick with what you know, right people?):

Charlie's Kitchen Flyer

If you would like a flyer designed I offer graphic design services, delivering a full color (or B&W, your choice) 8.5×11 or 11×17 show flyer in Web Ready JPEG and Print Ready PDF formats. I can also provide high quality printing with a fast 24-48 hour turnaround, if necessary.

Get in touch with me to request a quote and we can discuss your project.

CD Release Show Flyer

Either way, let’s raise the bar for what concert flyers should look like! As always, leave me any comments, positive or negative, and let me know what you think about these articles. Also, if you would like further information and examples of exemplary flyer design, check out this Smashing Magazine article, or any of these resources:

• GigPosters.com
  • The most definitive collection I’ve ever found!

• 125 Concert Posters (Pt 1 | Pt 2)
  • Collection of exemplary designs

• Design Inspiration: Concert Posters
  • A few examples, plus TONS of other links!

• COLOURlovers
  • Great for color pallet inspiration

One final word: Once you have a great looking flyer, USE IT! Plaster it everywhere, both in the real world and online. A promotional flyer is absolutely worthless if noone sees it. Trust me, if you can’t be bothered to even post a flyer at the venue you’re promoting a show for, you should probably be flipping burgers instead.

The Murder - Merchandise Display Close Up

Today’s topic is the importance of effective branding. Like it or not, this crazy thing we’re involved with is called the music business for a reason; that’s because it’s exactly that — a business. Back when I first got started playing music almost 20 years ago, any band perceived to be making any profit off of their music would be chastised and labeled a sell-out, among other things. However, in the age of electronic distribution, DIY ethos and cutting out the middle-men (IE: record stores and labels) the term sell-out is somewhat antiquated, especially since what we’re selling is effectively ourselves.

Even if you’re lucky enough to make a living doing this, you still need to keep food on the table and if it’s still just a hobby or something you’re working toward, you should at least get some form of reimbursement for what you do. This can come in many forms, from the obvious ones like the money you get paid for performing and selling CD’s and T-shirts, to some not so common things like endorsements and sponsorships.

This post will focus on your image and branding through effective merchandising (we’ll save endorsement deals for another post) because it is one of the things over which you can have 100% control. First and foremost, this entire concept can be summed up in one sentence:

Your Band Is Your Brand.

My goal is to hopefully break the misconception that many punk rock bands have, that if you’re punk your graphics and merchandise have to look like shit. You can have a nice slick package and still be “punk”. Look at some of your favorite bands: take a really close look at the design of their merchandise and CD’s (and I’m not talking about Blink-182 or Green Day, although, to be honest, their graphic designers should be commended) and you’ll see that there’s a certain level of professionalism there. This is important.

Your Logo

The first thing to do, if you already haven’t done so, is to make a striking and visually impacting logo, or find a friend to help you out if you’re not artistically inclined. (My good friend Bliss helped me with the crows in ours.) It should be visually striking, and it’s main purpose is to sum up your entire band in a nice tidy graphic. Think of it as your ambassador, because it will be the single thing drawing new fans to you before they even hear your music. (Robert Burke wrote a great article on The Greatest Punk Rock Logos a couple months ago)

The Murder Logo

Take a look at The Murder logo. I chose black, white and red because it is quite possibly the strongest color combination there is. (Not to mention the fact that you can get a discount when ordering black and red stickers on white vinyl from StickerGuy!)

It is strong, legible, and conveys the double-entendre of the band’s name, with the flock of crows and blood splatter.

When designing a logo make sure you make a vector graphic. I recommend Adobe Illustrator. The reason you want to make it a vector as opposed to raster (like Photoshop) is so you can scale it and reproduce it at any size you want. Trust me on this.

The Murder - O'Brien's Flyer

Once you have a slick looking logo, put it EVERYWHERE!

Whenever you book a show, make a flyer with your logo prominently displayed. You can also do other clever things, like theming your flyers to fit your bands name and/or image, like our good friend Shawn Refuse did on one of our recent flyers.

If you book a show though someone else, send them a high resolution copy of your logo. You should have one with a black background, a white background and a chroma green background, to accommodate whatever type of flyer they make. We did this by making a booking page on our website and keeping all relevant materials in that one place, so we can just link promoters to it.

Promotional Materials

You should also get stickers made with your logo, and URL on it. You can get 500 4.25×2.25″ black red and white stickers for about $86 from StickerGuy! (Jen, I expect a discount on our next order!) but I recommend getting at least 1000 or 1500 to start off with, if your budget allows. Give these away to your family, friends, fans, everyone. Leave them at music stores and other local hangouts to get the word out about your group. Don’t be stingy! Think of them like business cards to get the word out.

The Murder - Business Card

Speaking of which, while you’re ordering stickers you should also put in an order for business cards. The first couple of years in The Murder I didn’t have any, thinking that stickers were enough, but low and behold, I never actually had stickers on me. I recently got some cards made up, and I’ve already handed out about 100 or so in the past month. They are fairly simple, yet still eye catching, with our logo on the back and our website and the phone number to our booking line on the front. You can get about 5000 of them on glossy UV coated card stock for about $45, shipping included, from Flyer Studios. (Tell Larry that Roach sent you.)

As an aside, I have a personal policy that anything we give away as a promotional item has our URL prominently displayed on it, while any merchandise that we sell for profit does not (with the exception of music releases). It is my feeling that if someone gives you money for your merchandise with your logo they are essentially advertising for you anyway, and there is no need to be more blatant than necessary about it. Again, this is just my personal view on the subject, and your mileage may vary.

The Murder - Jeremy & Banner

Another thing to do is to get a large vinyl banner printed with your logo and URL, to hang behind the band when you play live. It will probably cost you about $140 for a nice quality 4′x6′ banner with eye holes, but it will be worth every penny, and then some. How many times have you gone to a show and asked yourself “Who is this band?”. Even if they were really good, I’m willing to bet they were forgotten soon after their set. It is worth the investment to stay in people’s minds. (Flyer Studios can help you with this as well.)

Ditto for custom kick drum heads. It’ll cost about $100 but again, it’s worth every penny. If you don’t have the cash to spend on both get one or the other, but make sure people know who the hell you are when you’re playing live without them having to ask someone.

One big part of promotional materials that is conspicuously absent from this article is your press kit. I have left this crucial element out intentionally, because I believe it is so important that it deserves an entire post of it’s own, which will be forthcoming.

Merchandise

Now that you have a logo and have been using it on all your promotional materials, it’s time to think about the next thing: merchandise. Sure, every band has a CD and t-shirt, and so should you, but you need to think beyond that as well! Besides good quality music and a solid stage presence, nothing will attract people to your group more than great looking, high quality merchandise. Look at it this way, you’re asking people to spend their hard earned dollars on your vision (and by proxy, you). Make it worth their while.

The Murder - Poker Chips

At a bare minimum, you should have at least 1 CD and 2 different t-shirt designs, but don’t stop there! At the moment we have 2 different shirt designs with 2 shirt colors for each design (Def-Star, ask for Steve), guitar picks (Steve Clatyon, one of our endorsements) drum sticks (CustomDrumSticks.com, ask for Jeff) and embroidered patches (Quality Embroidered Patches), just to name a few items. Another thing to try is to try to gear some merchandise to fit specific songs or themes you have. For instance, we have a song called “Rounders” about professional poker players. Everyone in the band is a poker player (our former bassist quit to move to Las Vegas to play professionally), so we had some custom chips made, and they generate a lot of interest because they’re so much different than the norm.

Another example would be the suggestion I made to my friends in The Designer Drugs, which was to get custom pill fobs made, since it goes perfectly with their name and image. Leverage your creativity and imagination and there’s no limit to the ideas you can come up with! Don’t do things just because everyone else is doing it. The market is flooded with good bands, and the only way to get ahead is to work hard, and think outside of the box, and be more creative than the next guy. (For those of you who are interested, you can see all of the merchandise I was talking about on our web shop.)

Presentation

This brings me to the last topic I’m going to discuss today: presentation. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve been to shows, including record release shows and shows by big name bands, where the merch table was little more than a folding card table with CDs and shirts thrown haphazardly all over it. Once I even saw a band that had a really nice display case, with only 1 CD in it. It looked amateurish and certainly did not entice me to buy anything. Perfect example of not leveraging your resources to their fullest potential.

The Murder - Merch Display

I have also seen very well conceived merch displays, and the bands that have those have consistently had more people around their table than their card-table bearing brethren. My good friends Bad Ash come to mind, as they had an incredible Halloween display, with all sorts of kitsch and horror related items interspersed with their wide variety of merch.

For The Murder’s merch display, we chose to make an entire display unit from the ground up. We first got a nice merchandise case from eBay and added some cork covered in fabric to the bottom as our base. We then used pushpins to mount everything tastefully so people could come by and browse our wares. For smaller shows, this may be all you need.

We took it a step further and got a mannequin torso (also from eBay) to display our t-shirts. We also have a tiered CD display holder and some latex crows to spice things up a bit.

The Murder - Display Case

Our most recent addition was a 3 piece 2′x5′ gridwall system that we got from a retail display outlet. It is an excellent way to display all of your merchandise, and you never have to worry about finding a table to set up with, as the entire setup is self-sufficient. Besides merchandise we have a laptop with email list software for people to sign up, Mp3 players for people to preview the CD before they buy it and free handouts, like stickers, flyers for upcoming shows and lyric sheets. This may seem a bit excessive (and pricey) but search around and find deals, and add on as time and money allow.

To wrap up, keep your brand consistent across everything you do. Even if something doesn’t have your name on it it should be easily identified as having come from your group. Also, just because you’re punk rock doesn’t mean your image has to look like crap. Put time and effort into your craft and people will respond by putting time and effort into your project!

I hope this article helps you out, and if it does, please don’t hesitate to contact me! I’d love to hear all about your experiences, good or bad, with trying out these suggestions, and more importantly, trying your own original ideas!

Good luck!

Project Info

• Client: The Murder
• CD Digipak
• Boston Punk
• Year: 2008

For the album cover of The Murder’s debut CD, we agreed that the strong brand image we had created through their logo design was strong enough that it should be the sole focus of the cover. The rest of the album art came about organically, taking cues from the logo and branding of the band.