Journal
Guides
What to Check Before You Sign With a Music Distributor
A distributor holds your music on its account. Seven things in its terms decide what happens when something goes wrong. Check them before you upload.
How to Keep a Music Project Moving When You Have Little Time
With a job and a life to run, the music only moves if every hour has a job. Clear goals, tasks broken down small, time with a shape and AI on the repetitive work.
How to Create a Brand Book as an Independent Artist
What a brand book is, why every artist and band needs one, what to include and how to build it from your visual identity.
How to Make Your Own Music Video: Direction, Filming and Editing for Independent Artists
How to direct, film and edit your own music video: start from your brand book, plan the shots, shoot to the master track and cut on the beat.
What To Make First When The Release Budget Is Small
Order beats total spend when a release budget is small. Here's what earns its place before a single dollar goes to an ad.
The One-Sheet Isn't a Short EPK
A one-sheet isn't a shrunk-down EPK. It answers a narrower question: is this worth thirty more seconds? Here's why the order matters.
You Don't Need A New Identity. You Need To Notice The One You Already Have.
Most artists already have an identity, it just never got noticed, named, or used on purpose. Five places to look for it yourself, before hiring anyone.
Presence or Release? A Straight Answer.
Two packages, two different questions. What Presence and Release each include, who each one is for, and how to tell which one your project needs first.
How to Write a Press Release for Your Music
One page, six parts, and no adjective you can't prove. A practical guide, with a free template.
An EPK Is Not a PDF
A PDF is a container. An EPK is what goes inside, and it can take almost any format.
What Visual Identity Means for a Musician
A logo is the smallest part of it. Visual identity is the set of choices that lets people recognize your project before they read your name.
Where Your Identity Shows Up
A map of every place people see your project, from a tiny thumbnail to the stage, and why the small ones matter most.
Audit What You Already Have
Put everything your project shows today on one screen and see what belongs together and what fights.
Find the Three Words Behind Your Sound
Three specific words turn taste into a filter you can use for every visual decision that follows.
Collect References Without Copying
How to build a moodboard that gives you direction, and turn it into one idea you can photograph and film.
Choose a Color Palette You Can Keep
One main color, one support, two neutrals. A palette small enough to remember and strict enough to be recognized.
How Color Sets the Mood
Warm or cool, loud or muted, high or low contrast: the three dials that decide how your images feel.
Pick Your Typefaces
One typeface for titles, one for reading, where to find free ones, and the license check nobody does.
Turn Your Name Into a Wordmark
A symbol can wait. Your name written the same way everywhere cannot.
The Small Details That Repeat
Grain, a border, a texture, a shape. Small recurring details do more for recognition than a big idea used once.
What Makes a Press Photo Work
A press photo has a job. Here is what it has to solve for the person who receives it.
Plan a Photo Shoot on a Small Budget
A shot list, two hours and a clear brief get more usable photos than a full day without a plan.
Light, Location and Wardrobe
Three decisions made before the camera comes out define most of what the photos will say.
Choose Your Lead Photo at Thumbnail Size
Pick the main photo at the size people will see it, then give the big favorite a different job.
Edit Your Photos So They Look Like One Set
One treatment applied to everything beats ten good edits that do not match.
What a Cover Has to Do
A cover has three jobs today: get noticed small, say what kind of music this is, and belong to you.
Design Cover Art That Reads Small
One idea, strong contrast, and a test at the size of a fingernail before you commit.
One Release, Many Formats
Square, vertical and horizontal from one master artwork, without redesigning each time.
Singles in a Row Need a System
Decide what stays fixed and what changes, so four singles look like one project.
Put Text on Images Without Ruining Them
Hierarchy, margins and contrast: three rules for titles, dates and names on top of a photo.
Set Up Your Streaming Profiles
Photo, banner and bio, the same choices in every platform, so a listener lands in the same place each time.
Make Your Instagram Grid a Front Door
The first nine squares answer one question for a stranger: what is this project?
Carry the Identity Into Video
Color, framing, titles and thumbnails: how your videos stay yours even when the footage is simple.
What People See in the Room
On stage you control less than you think and more than you use: clothes, light, a backdrop, the merch table.
Merch and Print Basics
When merch makes sense, what files a printer needs, and why colors change on fabric and paper.
Write a One-Page Style Guide
One page with your colors, type, photo rules and wordmark, so nobody has to decide the same thing twice.
Build Templates You Can Reuse
Three templates cover almost everything you post. Build them once and stop starting from a blank canvas.
Organize Your Files So Anyone Can Find Them
A folder structure and naming rule that lets you answer any request for material in two minutes.
When to Change Your Identity and When to Leave It
You get bored of your identity long before your audience has learned it. How to evolve without restarting.
Put It All Together in Your EPK
Everything you built in this guide, in one place, ready to send. And what to do next.