Music has always been an important part of my life and personal identity, and when I got home from the guitar store at age 16 with my first guitar, I knew my life had been forever changed. After several years of practice alone in my bedroom, and the additional purchase of a bass guitar and amplifier, I joined a band with an old high school friend, and started playing gigs all over Milwaukee.

One reoccurring theme I noticed as I played show after show, is that many small-time bands feel helpless socially and economically. They have passion for their craft, and they have the drive to put themselves out there and perform, but it’s really, really hard to make any money as a gigging musician (well, a gigging musician that doesn’t only play covers).

Local Noise is my attempt to give local musicians and bands a platform, a place where they can meet and collaborate with other musicians in their area, and find reliable, paying gigs.

Process

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to create a business focused on music and musician networking, but picking an artistic direction for this business plan proved especially difficult. I made many different sketches of different name ideas, like “PatchBay” (the connection hub used to wire instruments, microphones, and so on in a recording studio), Feedbacker, and of course, Local Noise.

The final logo idea for Local Noise came from a suggestion from my professor at the time. Local music scenes often have low-budget zines and posters for music promotion, so why not tap into that iconography and style and make the logo a speech bubble with some halftone dots?

Once the logo was finalized, I moved on to my infographic. This was meant to inform my target audience (and potential investors) about the purpose of the Local Noise project; what problems it’s addressing, who these problems affect, and how I plan on tackling those issues. It went through at least six iterations, all in very different art styles, before I was satisfied and finalized the layout.

Web design is an entirely different beast than print design, and since this was my first attempt at such, I opted to keep things simple. The project deadline didn’t allow for a functional demo of the entire site, so I made mockups of the three most important pages I wanted people to see: the curated homepage with written articles on news about Local Noise, a search page for individual musicians, and a search page for individual gigs.

The video was shot in an afternoon, and consists of an interview with a close friend of mine and active Milwaukee-area musician Joe Howland. Joe’s been a part of the Milwaukee music scene for much longer than I have, and he had shared some of his insight, and grievances, with the scene.

Lastly, the Local Noise brand book is a quick guide to the look and feel of Local Noise as a brand. I detailed the kind of language we use, what photographs we use, typeface standards, and more.