First compass, outlining what is important for me to accomplish and what ideas I had to make this happen.



Compass version two with a slightly changed focus alongside feedback and things to research.


Project potential in early stages of project that was sent to the one of the Creative Media Production staff.


10 slides basically outlining what matters, which was showing pride in New Zealand music. Who my target audience was, that being NZ music listeners from teens to young adults. What the issues were in trying to find kiwi artists and possible solutions to fix this problem.

Supercrit idea. Basically a rebrand of the New Zealand Music Month. Feedback received from this critique steered me down a path of creating a place for hopeful artists to learn about the business side of the music industry.



Project direction shift. I wanted to educate newer artists and give them a platform to get recognised.





Naming project. Exploring different names for my project, I wanted it to be recognised as 'New Zealand' and music based. I Settled on NZVO (New Zealands Very Own).


Visual Identity. Because the final name didn't sound very music based, I wanted to make it visually look music based. I intended to do that using loud colours, sound waves and other visual concepts that reflect the idea of music.
 





Vision and need to do.



Brochure iterations. The Big Break was my placeholder name idea until I could come up with a final project name. Brochure initially was to contain more information on making it in the music business and was to serve as a small survival kit. The visual changes reflect the changes in my projects style and aesthetic with me exploring new ideas.





I changed from a brochure to a pamphlet. I didn't want to burden my target audience with too much info, and opted for a smaller information dump which goes over the basics on what the website contains.


Poster itterations. My concepts revolved around the joke of musicians telling people to check their soundcloud. These concepts lead me to having a text message aesthetic that seeped into my overall design for the website.


Final poster


Website plan.


Website version 1. I chose to get rid of the news column as it felt like an unnecessary part of the website.


Website version 2. I decided to get rid of the Q&A page.


Website version 3


Website version 4


Website final version
 


Final report

Discovering new music has been an interest of mine for the longest time, and thinking about how my current music library has little to no New Zealand music is quite sad. Majority of the mainstream music we hear comes from overseas and pushes our music into the background. I want to change that. First I needed to look at why Kiwis don’t find large success in the music industry before I could find a way to create success for aspiring artists. I looked at what changed in the music industry to cause a decline in success seen in the 00’s, and found that the internet and streaming caused local music to be lost in a sea of content. When looking at NZ Music Month I found that many people had grown tired of it, some saying it looks and feels dated as many times it revolved around NZ legacy acts such as Shihad and Dave Dobbyn (Hunkin 2016). During my research phase I discovered that while there are music mentoring resources available, the information available is spread.

At the beginning of my project my target audience was the listeners, but I soon switched my focus to young aspiring musicians. My aim is to equip aspiring artists with the knowledge needed to start off in the music industry as well as a potential platform to succeed. I did not want to focus on creating music, as music is a creative process which usually generated from the artists personal tastes and is often a personal experience. Instead I wanted these resources to focus on the business side of the industry such as distribution models, gig do’s and don'ts and marketing.

I decided that the best way to achieve my aim was to create a website that is essentially a starter kit for emerging musicians aiming to take music seriously. I decided on a web format as that is the direction the music industry and world is headed. Having this information on the web also means it is easy to add and change the information held on the website as the music industry changes. I chose to name this website New Zealand’s Very Own, or NZVO for short. How users would find out about the NZVO would be through posters in city centers and flyers in music related shops such as CD and music instrument stores, alongside social media advertising. The website is split into sections that teaches the users about finding management, marketing, labels and touring. To meet the intent of giving aspiring artists a platform to succeed, I thought of holding a music tournament on Facebook. This tournament would be split into 5 genres (Rock, Pop, Hip Hop & R&B, Reggae and EDM) and will feature 16 acts in from each genre. The competition would be held on Facebook with a short clip of two artists songs and would require the public to vote between artist using the react feature on the Facebook post.This competition would be in partnership with the Homegrown music festival held in Wellington and the 5 winners will get a spot on the 2019 lineup. This tournament would expose the selected artists to a wider audience and gain more interest in the website.  The similar partnership could also work with other festivals such as R&V, Laneway and Bay Dreams. I wanted the website to look and feel colourful, vibrant and loud. These are words I attribute to what design relating to music design in a general sense should be. As my target audience is young aspiring musicians, I wanted the website to look and feel current as to not repel them away with a dated looking design.

I ultimately decided to take a informational design approach in the hopes of aiding up and coming musicians through the transition of being a hopeful artist into an established successful act. I also wanted to incorporate a human centered design method to connect artist with audience, giving them further opportunities to flourish.

At the beginning of this project my goal was to come up with a way for New Zealand hopeful artists could gain exposure in an oversaturated music market and connect them with a community. My initial idea was to create a music listening app where aspiring musicians would share their songs and users would have to listen and give feedback. I quickly moved past this year due to the risks of discouraging hopeful artists and listeners not taking the app seriously. I began to think more about to reach the younger listeners, which lead me to slightly changing my mindset going forward. I began to look at ways to show more pride in Kiwi talent. The ideas I thought of were mostly digital, as music has moved online. Some of these concepts were a New Zealand exclusive streaming service, a campaign for local businesses to play more Kiwi music, creating an algorithm which recognizes country of origin and finally a social media website discussing New Zealand music news. Feedback I received from these ideas was to use try use what already exists. This lead me to the idea of rebranding New Zealand Music month and changing the date to March. I noted how I felt the branding was old, the online presence was uninteresting, it focused heavily on legacy acts and that it was being forgotten. I felt like a rebrand and a more heavy focus on the online aspects of listening to music could revive the month. The idea to change the month to March was to coincide with Homegrown festival in Wellington, with gigs that could be held in anticipation of the festival. The feedback I received from this at Super Crit was that a rebrand may not be the best idea, and that I should consider a way to tie the different events and organisations together. Perhaps a way to connect artists with industry people, or to teach them about the inner workings of the music industry. This lead to my final concept of creating a website that compiles all the industry related information that an aspiring artists would want or need to know when they begin to navigate through the music industry. Teaching them early on would help to ensure they have a better chance at success as opposed to if they did not have that information. I had the opportunity to talk to one of the Massey Creative Media Production staff, Grayson Gilmour, who suggested a competitive event where the prize was a spot on the Homegrown lineup. This gave me the idea to create the Homegrown competition, and considering how younger listeners spend a lot of time on social media, holding this competition online seemed like the best option.

One of the biggest challenges for me was defining my project. It took me longer than expected to determine what was most important to achieve and how I could best go about accomplishing that, only doing so during the second half of the semester. This in turn meant that my ideas kept changing and evolving as the core values behind the idea changed until I settled on my final idea. Another thing I struggled with was comparing myself to my peers in terms of how much work they had done. This often left me feeling behind schedule, and I had to remind myself that I was doing a slightly different paper than the honours students and shouldn’t feel like I should be at the same stages as them.

This semester I really had to trust the design process. My project went every direction imaginable, and although I would often find myself discouraged by my progress compared to my peers, eventually things started to work and I got to where I wanted to be. Going into this project I told myself that if I could make something I was proud of, I would be happy regardless of my marks, and I feel I’ve achieved that. I feel that my project could easily be taken into the real world. There is music mentoring resources online, they just need to be in one place for easy access. I really believe a social media music tournament like what I conceptualised would be engaging for listeners by partnering up with an event that they are familiar with, and beneficial for artists regardless of if they win the competition. New Zealand is such a small place and we need every advantage we can get to support out musicians.