Easyfolk Media: Visual Identity

A client rarely comes prepared to the first meeting with a concept deck complete with imagery, a color palette, and value statements. Enter Joe Sanchez, founder of Portland-based Easyfolk Media.

Joe is a thoughtful soul who is deeply committed to creating intimate live music videos for musicians and music lovers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Joe hired Bizi Creative earlier this year to help create a visual identity and website for the launch of Easyfolk Media, whose videos are lovingly shot and often showcase intimate settings, both indoors & outdoors, throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Here’s a sneak peek of some of the branding elements we created for Easyfolk Media and the process of meeting Joe’s requirements while also pushing him to envision Easyfolk in the years to come ... 🎶

Project Goals

• Create a clean, simple, and straightforward visual identity for the Easyfolk brand to use across all marketing materials & social channels.

• The visual identity should heavily influence the design of the upcoming Easyfolk Media website.

• The color palette should reflect indoor and outdoor spaces in the Pacific NW.

Setting the Mood

A beautiful thing happens when clients put their trust in your hands. This project is the perfect example of sharing ideas, exploring the uncomfortable, and striking that sweet balance between the short-term microscopic details and the longer telescopic picture. Check out the three initial mood boards below for a window into the world of our process at Bizi Creative.

Logo Inspiration

• Inspired by Ear Trumpet Labs “Louise” microphone

• Utilizing a custom script font as a nod to vintage instruments & amplifier emblems

• Create a video tag to feature the artist’s name, shoot date, location, etc.

• Explore imagery of folk instruments & equipment in keeping with high-tech post-production

Testimonial

"Bethany and Zoe each, in their own way, were able to reveal to me elements of my brand that I now consider indelible. And they did this with the utmost patience for a beginner like myself. They are strong communicators, both interpersonally and logistically. The gaps in my knowledge were always met with grace and expertise, and I was always reassured that the goal was for me to learn during this process so that I can one day manage it all on my own. With their help, I’m now in a great position to launch my company this fall. These days many people can make you a website or logo. But not everyone does this work with authenticity, earnest communication, and constant support like Bizi Creative. I can’t recommend them enough." - Joe Sanchez, Founder of Easyfolk Media

Stay tuned for the upcoming Easyfolk website launch to see these

branding elements in motion!

"Sort Your Music": A tool to quickly sort your playlists + shake your money-makers

[scroll through the Spotify playlist above to see the track progression]

Every summer, my parents throw at least one rager in the backyard. Everyone in the family (plus a special guest or two) is tasked with some form of party prep. This year my husband Marshall and me were asked to create a playlist for the party with a few parameters ...

"Must include Ted Hawkins,"Bring It On Home, Daddy,” David Lindley, and El Rayo X “Gimme Da Ting,” James, “Laid” & Talking Heads, “I Zimbra”... oh, and if it could be six hours long that would be great."

In the true spirit of procrastination, we put this task off until our drive to Eugene from Portland, Oregon. We started by listing all the bands my parents and their "hippy" yet also "hip" friends might enjoy. We came up with about 32 bands pretty quickly. From there, we decided to add two or three songs from each band to a playlist on Spotify.

But where do you go from there? Should we just hit shuffle and see how it goes? Nah.

We decided to consult Google and almost immediately found Sort Your Music. If you don't use Spotify (a cringy topic these days, I know), then this whole read is irrelevant.

Sort Your Music is a tool explicitly built to sort Spotify playlists by various parameters.

To check it out, follow this link and then follow these steps:

1. Login with your Spotify credentials

2. Pick your playlist

3. Sort the playlist by clicking on the column headings in the playlist table

4. Save the sorted playlist to Spotify

Sort Your Music lets you sort your playlist based on several Echo Nest song attributes, including:

1. Beats Per Minute (BPM) - The tempo of the song.

2. Energy - The energy of a song - the higher the value, the more energetic the song

3. Danceability - The higher the value, the easier it is to dance to this song.

4. Loudness - The higher the value, the louder the song.

5. Valence - The higher the value, the more positive mood for the song.

6. Length - The duration of the song.

7. Acoustic - The higher the value, the more acoustic the song is.

8. Popularity - The higher the value, the more popular the song is.

9. Rnd - A random number. Sort by this column to shuffle your playlist.

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We opted to sort our playlist by energy (decreasing energy to increasing energy), and as our spooky luck would have it, the last guest left the party as the final track played.