Tiny Machines
Tiny Machines is bringing back the mission of music from the '60s and '70s that made political/philosophical statements in the hope of changing the world. With their debut album on the way, they commissioned me to develop their branding, album art, and digital marketing campaign.
The Outcome
The Challenge
The new band, Tiny Machines, was gearing up to launch their debut album. Founding members had a huge following in the music community from previous projects, but no established brand identity. They needed a full-on branding campaign and a strategy for gearing up to release their album.
The Role:
Head producer, Jon Margulies, commissioned me to develop the Tiny Machines branding, logo, photo art direction, and digital media campaign before the launch of their album. We also explored first phase designs for the album art.
Tiny Machines started from scratch and within a few months of launching skyrocketed to over 34K facebook follows and 35K fans!
We determined which singles were hits in various geographical regions using Social Media ad testing.
Tiny Machines is gearing up to launch their first music video!
The Process
Interview:
I had worked with Margulies back in 2013 when he had be develop the branding for his music tech-hub, Hobotechnologies.
You're kinda like a one woman design agency. You do it all: social, illustration, branding. What do you recommend?
At the launch of this project, we discussed the goals of Tiny Machines. Since the first album would be released digitally, the main investment would go towards building a fan base. This way, by the time Tiny Machines launched their second album, they'd have the exposure and fan-base necessary to justify printing albums.
The solution: super-powered branding and a far reaching social campaign.
Defining the Specs:
T.M. wanted a throw-back to "The Time Machine" with a 1960's machinist's shop. They would need a website, social media assets for all channels including: BandCamp, SoundCloud, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and more.
We'd also run A+B testing on Facebook ads to determine which singles would be the best hits in different geographic regions.
Research:
After hosting a simple social campaign to build social proof, we were able to determine which songs would be single hits. We designed the website and other social profiles to feature those songs front and center.
Since we were establishing Tiny Machines as a new band, it was very important to build on the established fan-base of the individual members. We spotlighted artists' previous projects in headline copywriting and put an emphasis on free downloads for easy lead-magnet offerings.
Front and center would be clearly unique hallmark branding that would quickly build brand recognition with visually enticing custom typography, a specific request of Tiny Machines.
The Design Process:
I started with the three different branding directions that all spoke to the band's request for 1960's meets vintage machinist vibe. After the first round of design concepts, Tiny Machines chose a clear path to the current design.
I took a few weeks to render the custom typography and miniature machine illustrations. During this time, I worked with a photographer in Los Angeles to to shoot images that played to the aesthetic defined in the first design phase. Several textural images including airplane propellers and lug-nut patterns were sourced for overlays and graphic impact. I worked with the band to develop bios, headlines, and supporting promo with tones that embodied the brand values. All the branded assets were packaged into a library for the band to use in other applications.
With the logo complete, the support images sourced, and the photography at hand, I set out to render and implement all the assets in the digital media sphere. I developed a series of animated Facebook ads, each featuring a different song. I tested each of these ads, bolstering the top favorites across similar psychographics. Once we achieved over 20K facebook likes, we shifted focus to the band's lead-magnet. The top performing ads were converted into free downloads for "true-fans." Those subscribers were targeted with an email marketing campaign for album pre-release sales to increase the band's chances of topping charts.
At this point, I experienced a major death in my family and I shifted focus to more personal matters. I handed the project reigns over to another designer in L.A. Even still, T.M. commissioned me to develop a first phase presentation for the collector's edition of the Tiny Machines album.
