locals

A WIP exploration into the needs of local music, and keeping smaller discreet scenes alive

the problem

“College kids just aren’t coming to these things anymore.”

Local music scenes, function on a gradient of “you have to know someone.” In a peculiar age where young people are becoming more isolated than ever, this has become a little more complicated.

This project is an attempt to see if there is a digital solution to a very specific issue, with very specific people, in specific places.

catching up

Tackling this project has looked like this.

The issue was expressed to me by a promoter. It posed a lot of interesting questions and issues: 

  • Why these past few years?
  • Is it just this town?
  • Is the semi-secretive nature of some of these events to blame, or are college students just more risk-averse now than ever? 

These questions excited me, and I wrote down a lot of my thoughts and even tried to make a brand. It wasn’t long before I ran into some obvious problems in solving the issue with an app.

  • These things are “gatekept” for a reason. Is accessibility really a good goal to have?
  • There are already apps for this reason, even if the most successful one is Instagram. What are we trying to do differently?

This was where I got stuck. I kind of gave up here, deciding it was best to be left be.

Then, I went to Config, 2024. I got to confront a lot of my ideas about what product design was. It reinvigorated me: an idea like this was worth something, in an age where everyone was so isolated. So I broke down the pieces to the bare essentials and started back up again, right from the post-its.

next: mapping

This sort of mapping is something I used to dread, but now I recognize it as a great way to sort through my thoughts.

Here, I tried to look into basic user issues, wants, and needs. The red post-its here note painpoints that this user might have.

It other points, the post-its turn into more of a business pitch, of why this app would be a solution over others. Here, the red denotes immediate issues I ran into, and the green denotes solutions that could be proposed.

This was a breakdown of some suggestions/wants from the promoter’s original idea.

Overall this is what the planning file looked like…which isn’t completely transparent, because the original planning file actually was the image below.

now: branding

The yellow and off-black branding was something I had known from the start: it was bold, stark, and bright. I knew I needed to hit a balance of usable and alternative with the theming. An artist at heart, I was easily consumed with branding iterations.

“Locals” had been a bit of a placeholder, but it worked. Upon revisiting the branding iterations: Eureka!

The LampPost. It made so much sense, taking from the pasted fliers you can find on any lamppost in major cities. Now, I have something to work off of for a wordmark and a simplified logo.