A well-designed image can serve as a powerful marketing tool for a musician and allows them to represent themselves as they want to be perceived. The photo above is Kevin Never Talks.
Musicians desire to share their music with an audience that understands them, and an experienced graphic designer can help musicians get their music to that audience faster by allowing the musicians to express themselves outside of their music.
Graphic designers also can help shape an audience’s perspective seeing as the graphics serve as an essential visual representation of a musical artist or band.
Let’s talk about four of the main ways that graphic designers can help musicians market their music, including:
- Websites, now including direct links and downloads of their music
- Digital Media Cards, NFC cards that showcase all your media and music
- Album Covers, from “photoshopped” original photos, to custom designs
- YouTube and other Social Media apps to define the graphics and visuals
- Posters, Merch, Clothing, logos and graphics representing the band
Musician Websites
A website becomes the artist’s signature. It is important that it reflects their image and is a library of their music. The website acts as a source of information so that fans can track tour dates, news and all of the new music.
A well diversified and experience graphic designer will most likely also have the skills of a web developer, allowing the artistic vision of a graphic designer to combine beautifully with the creation of the website.
An experienced graphic designer can turn a basic WordPress website template into a visually pleasing experience for website visitors.
Because over 51 per cent of all website visits are done on a mobile device, a graphic designer must be able to create a mobile-friendly design for a musician’s website.
A graphic designer will be responsible for essential visuals on a musician’s website such as the artist’s logo, all photography, colors and graphic.
Digital Media Cards
Are you a musician or an artist? Carry your portfolio, your music, and always have easy access to sharing your work and creativity with a tap! Have links to your SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube, or any other platform on which your music can be enjoyed!
All of this is created and designed by your amazing graphic designer. The cards have a near field communicator chip built in. So your album cover is on the front and all you social media details as well as you music is automatically saved to the other party’s phone just with a tap. Voila, your music and details are shared.
Click here to check out the Tagfolio
Album Covers
Artists design their album covers to cause an emotional reaction in the listener/fan. This space is a great opportunity for the artist to connect with their audience on a level outside of their music further enforcing the mutual interests. Telling the story of the the artist through their album covers or merely expressing the emotions of a single song. It is all captured by graphic design.
The creations are responsible for enticing people to a musician’s music, turning passive experience to an interactive listening experience.
That is the formula for turning an average fan into a super fan. Graphic designers can help new artists build their fan base by helping create amazing visuals as well as making the music available and enticing on all platforms from You Tube to iTunes to Spotify.
The music industry is plentiful and with platforms like TikTok, a new artist is born every minute. Competition is high, so your image is your first opportunity to stand out or at least be identifiable to the audience you want to attract. This requires each album and each song to have a unique cover.
The images captured by the graphic designer that tells the story of the artists, are the designers most important work!
YouTube
As of 2021, You Tube was the most visited website on the Internet. A talented designer will capture and promote the artists by creating links that entice the listener to visit other channels the artist is represented on. This includes working on the graphics displayed on the channel, the channel art displayed on the homepage, and the video thumbnails as these attract an audience to click on the video and listen to a musician’s music.
Posters and Merch
Posters and merch and even giant billboards are all jobs for the graphic designer.
Musicians need to invest in their merch so that they can have materials that their fans are a part of. This creates loyalty and also brand awareness. The bands logo becomes synonymous with the band itself and can be represented on anything really and eventually be considered memorabilia.
Even the most low-budget bands hosting a gig can look like an event from Coachella with the help of an amazing graphic designer.
In today’s digital age, we rely on QR codes and clever marketing to attract fans to our venues. So a well designed poster with QR codes will get the house packed.
Musicians are in the business of music and graphic designer are in the business of showcasing your talents. We each operate best in our own talents.
Let us represent your style, and connect your music with your audience.
Check out our Graphic Design page.
