A friend created this graphic recently and asked the question

Why are all indie bands wearing striped shirts?

Have you noticed how similar sounding bands look and dress in a similar way.

A lot of this is down to codes and conventions of fashions and how they relate to musical genres.  Musicians creating a certain type of music  will dress in a certain type of way. Why?  Well, it’s a ‘short hand’ and to put it in terms of semiotics, the clothing is a sign which sends signals to you and me which loosely tell us what sort of music these people play.

So my question for you today is as follows.

Is your style of music apparent from your promotional photos?

Your visual branding and how you look in your promotional materials should go some way to telling people who you are and what you sound like before people have heard even a note of your music.  The more visual help you can give them the better and here’s a good example why.

My band, a musical comedy ensemble played a gig on Saturday night and this is the promotional image used on the poster outside the venue.

Straight away, you can tell that this isn’t a grindcore band.

The type of clothing we are wearing and our postures gives people a pretty good idea of what sort of group we are and what to expect when they hit the ‘play button’ or see us live.  Several people approached us after the show saying that they bought tickets to the event because of how we looked on the poster.  We looked like we’d give them a good, funny night and they were glad they came.  Job done.

Takeaway tip

Make sure your look and your clothing in promotional images helps ‘sell and tell’ your music as much as possible.

Got any questions about this post or how you can better market yourself?

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