BRAND BOOK

darkpop!

Brand Promise

  • Good music should be easy

Objective

  • build a brand that inspires

  • leverage brand to kickass business

  • Set up the A Team

  • Maintain kickass business

Audience

  • Artists/Producers

  • Fans (of mine, of my artists)

  • Age 15 - 35 (gen z, millenials)

  • Creative

Brand Mission

  • empower artists to develop a distinct sound, powerful brand, and longterm career

  • inspire fans to live better, be more creative and more badass (by sharing the artistic process developing artists)

  • give aspiring artists/producers gems and frameworks so they can develop and unlock levels to their own music

Brand Pillars

  • Artist Centric

  • Story Based

  • Seek Big Moments

  • Dropping Gems

  • Constantly Expanding

Brand Voice

  • Playful Tone, underpinned by a calm stoicism

  • Genuine, Raw, Personal

  • HiFi

  • World Class Sound, Anywhere

  • Kenny Beats embodies the playful tone, COLE BUXTON embodies the calm stoicism

Core Values

  • Building Longterm Human Connections

  • Real, Personal Music

  • Everything is an instrument

  • A donut a day

  • Art vs Craft

  • Genres are bendable

  • Develop A Unique Sound (for each artist)

Positioning

  • Underdog

  • Premium Quality

  • COLE BUXTON is ref.

Gear Associations:

  1. Neumann

  2. Vintage Japanese Instruments

  3. Moog

  4. Sequential/Dave Smith Instruments

  5. Universal Audio

  6. I'd like to seek sponsorships from these and other companies

Wardrobe

  1. Nautical, Edgy, Minimal Aesthetic

  2. COLE BUXTON

  3. AllSaints

  4. Wide Leg Pants

  5. Cropped Shirts

  6. Layered Tanks

  7. Single Stitch Vintage

  8. All Black, Red, Pink, pretty much matches my extended color palette low key

Other Associations

  1. First item

  2. Second item

  3. Third item

One Phrase Stories

  • playing pro at 15

  • almost became tattooer

  • touring New England

  • they preferred my tiny studio to the big ones... or maybe just my taste

  • rewiring the studio:

  • thousands of hours spent fixing every problem that could possibly come up

  • hundreds of sessions

  • improving all the time

  • self employed for 5 yrs

  • sold solar door to door to learn communication and psychology

  • worked for a moving company to stack up cash pre LA

  • packed my whole life in my corolla and moved to LA

  • first night in LA made "Sugar Free" (just dropped)

  • hired for a writing camp producing 4-10 tracks per day

  • locked in with artists I believe in

  • linked with Grammy winning engineer Danny Garcia

  • making connections everywhere

  • AirBnB sessions w Cali Cartier

  • UAS, Community Curated Record Label

  • everyone wanted to work w me

Milestones To Aim For

  • Major Sync Placements

  • Major Label Placements

  • Platinum Producer Creds

  • Grammy Nom/Wins

  • Tiny Desk Performance

BARLOW

barlow italics!

BARLOW THIN
is good for quotes or whatev

Noto Sans is the font for body copy etc.

Noto Sans is the font for body copy etc.

Back To Barlow for light content and thinner text for blockier sections of font etc.

BARLOW CAN IMPACT

NOTO SANS CAN ALSO IMPACT

noto sans italics

It seems to my taste that left justify generally just feels a lot cleaner and easier to read practically, so I'll keep everything left justified.

Here are the fonts to be used for designs, packaging, etc. The Boxing font turns into a good DARKPOP logo at the bottom. Can be used to emulate an Explicit Lyrics sticker as well on releases.Overall Helvetica is just GOATED and always works for everything.TBH I would probably use it on the website too, but it is unfortunately not an option on CARRD which I use to build landing pages.Se La Vie, the fonts we have here are very workable.This ramble here demonstrates the body format for the website etc.Noto Sans, left aligned, #2e2e2e
Dope.

Content Formats

Style Guide for IG Stories - DARKPOP branding in bottom left corner, associated tags vertically right side, captions upper left

with compelling images stories can be created and told in IG. Then posted as Carousel posts. This story reads backwards bc I screenshotted from IG archives.

It's clear I make music on my IGClean Aesthetics
Clear what I do
Sometimes my drawings
Sometimes film photos/polaroids

I gotta get more film for my polaroid and create a new series of polaroids again, I was consistent throughout the pandemic and have a ton from that era, very useful storytelling tools.Here are some samples of my drawings for use in telling the "almost became a tattooer" story.

I almost became a tattooer

Polaroid Stories

Photo from a session with Muda, Eddie Saturn, Okinoth. This was my studio back in MA. I built all the acoustic panels out of 2x4s, mineral wool, and burlap.This was the session we wrote and recorded Later Set To, which just dropped.

OK...STRATEGY

2025 will be a pivotal year for me, Darkpop.net as a brand, and for my artists. Here's my foundational strategy for all artists I'm working with:

Consistency & Quality

  1. Drop Singles every 6-8 weeks for 12-18 months - roughly eight songs per year

  2. Do something eventful every 2-3 weeks

  3. Do something smaller weekly

  4. Minimum Viable Music Video for each release (3-5 hrs to create)

  5. Story centered content to promote the artist and song

  6. Focus on promotion AFTER song is out, and continued sustained promo after

  7. Find sustainable content methods for each artist

  8. Find an effective Ad Campaign strategy to direct traffic to the artist

  9. Community Engagement Posts to get people involved and feeling more connected to the artist

  10. Monetize the artist so they can maintain focus on the music

My own strategy should probably mirror this one.

Since a core value is seeking bigger moments, it makes sense to create eight bigger moments spaced about six weeks apart.

AirBnB Sessions

The Air BnB sessions will take place with a small team and one artist. The objective is to create a full song start to finish in one weekend, complete with a Music Video and all the associated content for release. We'll document the process and tell the artist's story in a mini-documentary series.

  1. Mid January

  2. Late Feb

  3. Early April

  4. Late May

  5. Early July

  6. Late June

  7. Late August

  8. Mid/Late October

These sessions would be sick if we could get them sponsored.

Something Big Every 2 Weeks

Between my Artist's release schedule, gigs, sessions, sync movement, etc. I'm pretty covered on additional notable things happening without putting too much extra effort.

YouTube Weekly

I need to develop the structure for this, but it provides a consistent opportunity to build fans, create long form content that can trickle down into shorter mediums as well.I've considered Live Streaming as well/as alternative but to be honest I may want to start out where I have a little more space to develop the aesthetic etc. Live streaming can potentially come later.

  1. Create Content Around Sample Making

  2. Give Away Valuables

  3. Build Out A Big Ass Email List

  4. Market Through Emails

  5. Run A Big Product Launch

BLACK FRIDAY
2025

I am open to refining this strategy, whatever gets us most profitable in a reasonable amount of time.

We just need to build the Distribution Channels for our marketing, then get as much traffic as possible through it.

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

dr. darkpop

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

Good Music Should Be Easy

©DARKPOPinc.