REPORT MANDATORY ASSIGNMENT 01 BAND PROMOTION

INTRODUCTION

Blind Pilot is a real world indie/folk/rock hipsterband from Portland USA. Manda-tory Assignment 01 was to do research on the band and their target audience, and make a a design criteria poster and for the release of their “new” album We Are The Tide.

INTERPRETATION OF THE TASKThis week was all about research and creative process. New terms were

introduced like quantitative and qualitativ research, primary and second-ary research, drivers and barriers and design criteria. As the band Blind Pilot is a real band but we have no real connection with them all my reserch sec-ondary through internet sources.

TARGET AUDIENCEBlind pilots target audience:• Age: 20-34• Sex: Both• Income: Middle class• Education: Bachelor or higher• Location: Mainly big cities in USA and London in Europe. Particularily

Central and SW Portland.• Lifestyle and interrests: Hipster/folk-hipster, music-lovers, plaid or

band shirts, enviromentalists, organic, alternative, vintage, social media, craft beer.

RESEARCH AND WORK PROCESS

RESEARCH

RESEARCH ON BLIND PILOT In this section I will explain about the research process. For more detail on the results of the research read the Analysis section. One of the main learning outcomes this time was the process of research. So I used a lot of time researching how to do research before the actual research on the client and the target audience. I always found research on target group a bit confusing and difficult so it was very interresting to dive deeper down into this subject. As our band is a real band from Portland USA, and their fans as well are mainly from USA my research has all been through internet and tools available there. My two main sources for for how to do the research were :

• An article on “Identifying Your Target Music Market” here.• And a very fine collection of market research tools here.

So, before doing research on the target audience I had to do some research on the band itself. Who is Blind Pilot? To find that out I started on Youtube to see and hear them, and to read some lyrics. Then I checked for general profiles on Myspace, Soundcloud, Spotify and Itunes. I also found that they had a blindpilot.com page with some more info and photos. There was also a store-page on their .com with albums and posters and merchandice which gave me some great input on their visual style. After finding the general mostly gener-ic information about the band I started to search for som more in-depth info. I found two interviews:

• Interview with Blind Pilot on Soundcheck Magazine.• Interview with Blind Pilot on The Boston Phoenix blog.

Now I felt that I had a good idea about who Blind Pilot is, and also an idea about their target audience. In short Blind Pilot is a Indie-folk-hipster-pop/rock-band and their audience would probably fit the same box without the “band”.

RESEARCH ON THE TARGET AUDIENCEThe next step was to do some in depth research on their target audience.

I started with a pieco of quantitative research. As mentioned earlier I had found an article with some very fine market research tools, and one of them was almost perfect for my purpose: followerwonk.com. Basicly what it does is give you a lot of demogarphic info on followers of any twitter account, nicely dis-played with graphs and maps. So I typed in their twitteraccountname and waited a few minutes before I had a nice report. The most useful info here was probably the location of the followers, and the top words used. Also of some interest was follower count the Blind Pilot followers have and how long they have had accounts on twitter.

I said that followerwonk was almost perfect. What it did not give me was age income and sex. I could get sex as a subscriber but I did not find that import-ant. I already had an impression from reading post on twitter and facebook that sex would be close to even. I also had a certain idea about age and income.

An other problem is that Twitter users themselves can be seen as a certain type of persons (normally slightly higher income and education). I would love to have similar data from Facebook, but for that I would need to have the ac-count password (meaning that with a real client it can be done).

My next step was to crossreference these data with some other demo-graphic statistics. On portlandonline (using their local audience as a refer-ence) I found demographic maps on race and ethnicicty, income and education. The last crossreference I used was a humorous Portland hipster demographic presented at portland.suntimes.com based on number of yoga stu-dios, cafes, bachelordegrees and people of age 20-34. It all snapped in place with my first Blind Pilot twitter map.

I had now basicly confirmed that my target audience were hipsters, white middle class with bachelor or higher degrees living in center and SW Port-land (Also with substansial numbers in Chicago, New York and LA, and London as the highest in Europe).

I could now start with the qualitative research on hipster. As I am based in Elverum Norway and only had about a week, my qualitativ search was all sec-ondary through internet articles. The three best listed here:

• A very interesting article on how Hendrick’s Gin marketed for hipsters at fastcompany.com.

• The symbolic meaning of 6 hipster trends on Bustle.com.• How hipsters are driving up beer prices on Priceintelligently.com.

And what better way to top it off than to watch two episodes of my newly discovered comedy TV-series: Portlandia.

CREATIVE METHODSWe were to choose at least one method of idea development from a list of

such in this weeks lesson. I chose to use mind-mapping. After maind-mapping and keywording I did some research on poster design in general. My main sourc-es on this was:

• Qreativeblock, How to design a Poster: 10 pro tips• Qreativeblock: 25 inspiring gig posters• Howdesign, 10 tips on creating killer gig posters

I alsoalso did some research on west coast native american art after seeing Blind Pilots own native american inpired posters on their site:

• Blind Pilot store• Freespiritgallery The shapes used in NW indian art

With this done I started to make a moodboard on Indian art. I also wanted to try a Victorian style vintage poster design. I have done some extencive studies on typography and ephemera and sanborn maps earlier so I did not feel I needed a moodboard for that part.

After making the moodboard I made some thumbnail sketches of different directions. The more typographic options I sketched digitally in Illustrator as I feel sketching and testing fonts by hand really slows me down and breaks the flow. Also like to do design options with patterns or lots of repetition in Illustar-tor directly. After some testing the indian art style was to time consuming for this project. My sandborn map style was also a bit time consuming and not totally the artistic style I wanted. I also tried some pure typographic styles, but ended up with now trendy double exposure/ overlay style as seen e.g in the True Detective intro.

ANALYSIS

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCHBlind pilot twitter follower locaton

Blind pilot twitter follower locaton

Portland education map

Portland income map

Portland ethnicity map

Portland humoristic hipster neighbourhood map, based on density of cafes, yoga studios, people with higher educaton and age 20-34.

Most used words on Blind Pilot twitter:

How long Blind Pilot followers has owned their Twitter account. Shows that they are early and experienced twitter users:

QUALITATIVE RESEARCHAs mentioned in more depht in the research section my qualitative research is based on several articles and interwievs on the internet. Here is what I found:

Blind PilotBlind Pilot is a indie hipster folk/rock band from Portland Oregon. They started out as a duo consisted by frontman Israel Nebeker and drummer Ryan Dobrowski when they studied in London. They played on the streets and had a great time. When they came back to the US they went on a bikecycle tour in the NW USA playing wherever suited them aside for some fixed bigger city gigs. Their main mantra was and is con-necting with people. After the release of their first album 3 Rounds and a Sound in 2008 they went on another bikecycle tour. While touring for 3 Rounds and a Sound they added four members. This added to their sound especially on their next album We Are the Tide which was released in 2011.

Blind Pilots audienceCONSUMER PROFILEName:Andy HansonAge: 34Occupation: Web designer and developerEducation: MasterIncome: 500 000 krClothing and interrests: Band shirts, west and bow on occations, hipster, enviro-mental, eats organic food, shares his code on the internet and uses only open source code, goes to hip shows and is active on at least 3 social medias.Drinks and dines at sushi restaurants, the local organic short rtavelled food-restau-rant and drinks at any local bar that sells Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

DRIVERSAlternative style, vintage style, authenticity, enviromentally positive.

BARRIERSDo not like to be labeled, especially not as hipster. Do not like to be targeted by mar-keting. Do not like things too established or commercial.

SKETCHES AND MOODBOARDS:

DESIGNDESIGN CRITERIA

Who is Blind Pilot:

Blind Pilot is a indie hipster folk/rock band from Portland Oregon. They started out as a duo consisted by frontman Israel Nebeker and drummer Ryan Dobrowski when they studied in London. They played on the streets and had a great time. When they came back to the US they went on a bikecycle tour in the NW USA playing wherever suited them aside for some fixed bigger city gigs. Their main mantra was and is con-necting with people. After the release of their first album 3 Rounds and a Sound in 2008 they went on another bikecycle tour. While touring for 3 Rounds and a Sound they added four members. This added to their sound especially on their next album We Are the Tide which was released in 2011.

Who is the Blind Pilot audience:

Age: 34Occupation: Web designer, developer, teacher, marketing, student, bartenderEducation: MasterIncome: 500 000 krClothing and interrests: Band shirts, west and bow on occations, hipster, enviro-mental, eats organic food, shares his code on the internet and uses only open source code, goes to hip shows and is active on at least 3 social medias.Drinks and dines at sushi restaurants, the local organic short rtavelled food-restau-rant and drinks at any local bar that sells Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

What is the stated problem:Make a poster that sells their new album We Are the Tide.

What is the actual problem:Make a poster that sells their new album We Are the Tide, and maintains their visual style as well as looks good on a wall in the audiences home.

Approach:• Make a design base on the artistic and trending “Double exposure/Overlay” style

as seen in e.g True Detectives intro, using a band photo and a Oregon nature pho-to similar to the ones on their website.

• Use symbols to tie the design with the earlier indian designs.• Tie the design with tide through the use of spiral symbols, alternatively a moon.• Use a bold font for the names to have more of the overlay effect and create a focal

point.

TYPOGRAPHY:Main bold font: Esforzando by pintassilgoprintsThin font on “Release” and date: Source Code

COLORSWhite background with Oregon nature photo clipped overlay.

COMPOSITIONBold typography on contrasting background color on the center rule of thirds mark as focal point. Band photo centralized on Bottom framing the text together with spi-ral symbols in US NWcoast style framing on top.

SOURCES AND REFERENCES

http://www.soundcheckmagazine.com/bands/interviews/1631-inter-view-blind-pilot https://twitter.com/blindpilot http://www.blindpilot.com/#/about/ http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/onthedownload/ar-chive/2011/11/09/the-tide-comes-in.aspx http://www.bustle.com/articles/70182-the-symbolic-meaning-of-6-hip-ster-trends-from-beards-to-fixies-kind-of-fascinating-but-whatever https://www.flickr.com/photos/fredcroydon/sets/72157611976294703 http://www.clipartsheep.com/eagle-design-a-limited-edition-seigraph-print-in-an-of-50-by--clipart/dT1hSFIwY0RvdkwyMWxaR2xoTFdOaFk-yaGxMV1ZqTUM1d2FXNXBiV2N1WTI5dEx6SXpObmd2TXpjdk1ESXZN-Mkl2TXpjd01qTmlaVGxtTm1RMU56VmtNekkyWm1ZNE16QmxNbVEzT-kRaaVlUY3VhbkJufHc9MjM2fGg9MjgxfHQ9anBlZ3w/ http://www.clipartsheep.com/glen-rabena-northwest-coast-native-art-clipart/dT1hSFIwY0RvdkwzZDNkeTVuYkdWdWNtRmlaVzVoTG1Od-mJTOW5ZV3hzWlhKNUwzQnlhVzUwY3k4eE9DOHhPQzVxY0djf-Hc9NTc2fGg9NDEyfHQ9anBlZ3w/ http://www.digifreq.com/digifreq/article.asp?ID=79 https://no.surveymonkey.com/r/?sm=jxj6CwX87cOKKA7nJve8%-2fA%3d%3d http://www.fastcompany.com/3039481/then-and-now/how-one-brand-hunted-cool-young-consumers-and-captured-them https://blog.bufferapp.com/market-research-tools http://www.jolynnoblak.com/define-and-validate-your-target-market/ http://aytm.com/pages/do-it-yourself https://blog.kissmetrics.com/online-customer-research-guide/