As we have had the pleasure of seeing our homeschool music come to life through the Pacific Youth Rock Orchestra, we have also added another creative element to this project that we didn’t originally imagine – building a brand for the orchestra.
A Bonus Homeschool Project
Since we began our Saturn Music & Entertainment homeschool project in 2016, we have been learning about what it takes to start a business. A lot of our education is based on learning trades such as the Adobe suite, music composition software, and publishing/selling our children’s books on Amazon. On top of that, we have also been learning about the back-end of business, such as marketing, business structure and how to build a strong brand.
As we have been working with The Pacific Youth Rock Orchestra, our Mom thought it would be a good idea to also incorporate what we have learned about business, marketing and graphics design into the project, by building a brand for the Pacific Youth Rock Orchestra.
Building a Brand
We talked with our music composition teacher, who runs the orchestra, to strategize how we could help build a brand that was appealing to young people. He gave us input on how he imagined the orchestra brand style, his art style preferences and then our Mom got right to work on design concepts/art.
Based on our research, we have learned that a key element to making a brand is making sure the brand style speaks to your target audience. In this case, we knew the target audience was teens and pre-teens, so we developed a brand style based on this information.
To strengthen brand recognition and identity we added a mascot that we thought teens, in particular, would be drawn to. Since the orchestra’s abbreviation is P.Y.R.O, we made a play on words and added a fiery phoenix to represent the group. Our Mom drew the art and design concept and then Hayden and I took it into Adobe Illustrator for tracing and coloring.
After many hours of working with the brand colors, textures, blends and overall “feel” in Illustrator, we completed the mascot and added all of the design elements together to create a branding package for The Pacific Youth Rock Orchestra that consists of a logo, audition poster, concert poster, concert playbill, and business cards.
Applying Our Whole Selves
Working on building a brand that is not our own was a really great experience as a homeschool assignment. Since we did a bunch of research before putting all of the elements together, and it took a lot of time to learn new features in Illustrator for the type of art we were creating, this unexpected homeschool project took way longer than we anticipated. We have really applied our whole selves to this homeschool music project, and we’re grateful that we were presented with this opportunity to further expand our learning.
Not only was it good practice using the Adobe programs to build a brand for someone else, it encouraged us to think even further on ways that we could strengthen our own brands within the Saturn Music & Entertainment suite of products.
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more updates as our homeschool music project comes to life.
Cheers!
For those who are interested in supporting our homeschool education, consider buying one of our music pieces, here, or one of our children's books, here.
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Image Sources:
Photo by: Feliciano Guimarães - Flickr License
Photo by: Klardrommar - Flickr License
Photo by: ND Strupler - Flickr License