Justyn Priest is an incredibly talented guitarist and singer-songwriter here in Spokane Washington. I met Justyn in 2019 when I was looking to learn guitar. I was referred to Justyn via a mutual contact and began guitar lessons shortly after. He was an incredible teacher and taught me everything I needed to succeed in guitar. I just only happened to go to two lessons before life got in the way, and that's why he is an accomplished local musician and I am building this website. 

I kept in touch with Justyn by tagging him in all of my extremely mediocre guitar videos and by liking all of his gig posts but always coming up with excuses to not leave the comfort of my own home (that's a joke, we had actually just had our second child and eventually we did make it out to see Justyn play. Support local musicians!).

Nonetheless, in 2021 Justyn reached out to me as he was looking to take on more solo gigs and wanted to start a brand for himself and his projects. He was looking for a logo, an electronic press kit, a website, and the occasional bit of marketing material. 

To say I am proud of this logo is an extreme understatement. This logo likely has more time and love put into crafting it than any other logo I have worked on. Justyn and I worked on fine-tuning every detail of this logo to fit his wanted brand and our collective standards.

Taking inspiration from one of The Allman Brothers Band's logos we opted to go with a blackletter text-based logo of Justyn's name ripe flourishes that intertwine between letters and lines.

I believe we went over upwards of 10 or 15 different design ideas before we felt like we were in the right direction. What I believe ultimately won Justyn over was what is my favorite aspect of this logo and one of my favorite design choices of my career. The acoustic guitar descending from the J and interweaving itself with the P below.

As soon as the first iteration of this design including the guitar popped up Justyn informed me we were 100% going in the right direction and we began to finetune the font choice as well as craft and tweak the intertwining tails on some of the letters. 

In the end, we boiled it down to the design you see above which has since been used in countless gig posters, videos, and posts; and is still used by Justyn today.  

Once we finalized the logo we began talks about a website. Justyn wanted a fairly simple website that he could share with fans, friends, family, and prospective venues to showcase his sound and vibe.

I created a simple website for Justyn consisting of just three pages, with the bulk of information easily found on the front page. this includes a short bio as well as some videos to highlight his music. I also created a simple letter mark logo specifically for the website that could fit easily in a small space like the header and as the website's favicon.

I also integrated a contact form so anyone looking to book Justyn could easily get in contact and a linked show calendar so Justyn can easily share upcoming shows with anyone visiting his site.

The site is extremely user-friendly and device responsive. You can learn more about Justyn or view the site by clicking the link below.

If you're like me and have little experience in the industry you may be asking yourself what an EPK is. An EPK is an Electronic Press Kit and is used as a professional resume that artists can send to venues and others looking to book for their locations or events.

In Justyn's case, it is a two-page kit that acts as a bio and resume so that anyone with access to it can get a feel for who he is as a musician and see what he has accomplished in his music career thus far. 

Creating Justyn's EPK was a lot of fun and a good exercise in layout design. Utilizing images and type I worked to create an aesthetic that Justyn felt fit him while also providing all the pertinent information in a concise and professional manner that he could use to land more gigs and further promote himself successfully.