Freestyle

In 2005 I had booked DJ Yoda to play at Headspin on the Saturday night of the Easter weekend which was at the end of March. Someone in Stirling had got in touch with me and was going to put him on there on the Sunday night and we were going to share flight costs, saving me a few quid.

Next thing was that this other guy cancelled his event, leaving me to pay for the flights on my own, the return journey of which was now useless so I would also have to buy another ticket to fly Yoda home on the Sunday.

I decided to put Yoda on myself on the Sunday night. I thought Dundee might be a good option, not being too far from Edinburgh and there not being huge amounts of competition there. I got in touch with Mark who I worked with at The Vaults, as he was originally from Dundee, and asked if he would be interested in co-promoting this as a one-off event.

After discussions we decided that we would put it on as a monthly event with a different guest DJ every month. Full steam ahead, we got the ball rolling and that meant producing flyers and posters.

The first flyer design is here.

I wanted a strong and immediately identifiable design which would form a recurring theme throughout all the flyers and promotional materials. I re-used some of the elements I had previously used in the Spin Off flyers in Edinburgh but, I think, improved on them greatly.

The effect with the partially obscured breakdancer was achieved by having two layers of text and two layers with the breakdancer figure, the top one of each at 60% transparency.

I was really pleased with this flyer. The night went really well too and was a sell-out.

Onto the next flyer and I kept the imagery and layout pretty much the same but with a simple change in colour.

Again the night went well and I was pleased with the outcome of the flyer.

For the next one I again changed the colour, this time to green, to complete the RGB triptych.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot the difference between who we had proclaimed would be playing in May on our previous flyer and who actually ended up doing it. The problem with trying to have the Next Date information on the flyer is that we needed to have the booking all tied up and confirmed two months in advance. On that occasion the booking we thought we had fell through, but it turned out well because A Skillz was excellent.

A slight change in the design for the next flyer, the first of what would be my CMYK range.

The Deadly Avenger night was notable for being very quiet, not many people turned up for that one. Deadly himself was a very nice guy but wasn't too bothered about playing records and was quite happy just to have a few drinks and a laugh with us. This was the beginning of the end for Freestyle.

Next up was a residents night, and as it turned out, the last Freestyle we ran due to declining turnout and rapidly decreasing bank balance.

I was sad for the night to finish but it wasn't feasible to continue losing money after a few poorly attended nights. Maybe if we had stuck at it it might have taken off, but it's difficult to promote a night in a different city to where you live.

I was very happy with the output for our publicity materials though. I think the branding was strong and recognisable and the concept was good, getting what the night was about over perfectly. If only more people were interested in what we were doing it would have been great.

However, onwards and upwards, I had new job to concentrate on.