Hendrix

I moved to Brooklyn in the fall of 2015 with rock n’ roll dreams. I was going to start a band.

It turns out finding musicians in a new city is harder than I initially anticipated. There’s Craigslist, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp – but none of those services facilitate meeting others in a face-to-face capacity.

I wanted something that felt more personal, grassroots, and even a little gritty. A more-social social network for musicians.

A name needs to be so many things. It needs to be memorable, but not marketing-speak; descriptive, but not complex; evocative, but not too abstract.

After sifting through a list of hundreds of names (many along the lines of BandFinder 2.0), Hendrix hit the mark. Jimi was a rock legend and one of the most celebrated musicians of the 20th century. The name Hendrix is memorable, descriptive, and evocative at the same time. Plus, the domain gohendrix.com was available. Deal.

I typically start branding projects with visual research. I assemble a moodboard of ideas to get a sense of the general aesthetic and feeling the brand should evoke. I wanted the Hendrix brand to be dark and moody with a lighthearted, modern edge.

A color palette aptly named after rock icons Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, and Rob Zombie emerged soon after.

Next, I wrote a creative brief and engaged a team of freelancers to further define the brand and illustration style.

Thomas Williams designed the wordmark, utilizing a custom typeface by Carl Rylatt.

We paired the wordmark with Colophonʼs Aperçu. The typeface is a modern take on classic Gothic faces such as Neuzeit and Franklin Gothic. Its balance of legibility and Gothic sensibilties fit well with the rock nʼ roll vibes.

Judson Collier did an incredible job creating illustrations that appear throughout the app. The gestures act as encouragement and are coupled with helpful messaging to guide the user.

The app interface came together quickly with so many visual assets already in place.

I built the first beta as a responsive web app in under three months. It leveraged a brew of Ruby on Rails and custom JavaScript — deployed and hosted via Heroku and AWS.

The appʼs responsive architecture ensures it looks and works perfectly on screens of all sizes.

Notifications are triggered at critical moments such as when a user gets a new follower or receives a message. A weekly digest email highlights new users nearby.

Surveys are scheduled biannually to collect user feedback and help direct the future of the app.

Digital products are never truly done. New features are added; old features need to be maintained. I track ideas in a Trello board and work on them as needed. Itʼs been rewarding to see the “done” column grow.

If you’re a musician, I’d love to have you join the community at gohendrix.com. Weʼre only getting started.

Jimi — thanks for inspiring us all...