Going the traditional route will require tapping into the services of others. That usu-
ally means a graphic designer, screen and/or offset printer, CD/USB drive duplication
service and, perhaps, some others, depending upon your product line.
The Graphic Designer
A Graphic Designer, if you don’t ready have one, is needed to create your saleable de-
signs, prepare artwork for screen or offset printing and also to guide you through the
process, make recommendations and provide options and ideas. Check with friends, fam-
ily and pretty much everybody you’ve ever met in your life for references and referrals.
Always check out their portfolio, on or offline. Ideally, find somebody with a good repu-
tation who’s done this type of work before. Not all graphic designers excel or are even fa-
miliar with certain reproduction methods. Most, or at least the good ones, are often spe-
cialists in a certain type of work such as brochures; annual reports; websites; publica-
tions; logos, etc. There are also those who specialize in band and artist materials, along
with merchandise design and production.
Although I’ve never used them, you might try and outfit called BandJob.com. From
their site, “Band Job is dedicated to the role of visual arts in music. A place created for
professional designers working within the music industry to showcase their work and
shoot the shit with fellow artists.” By the way, BandJob allows cursing on their site fo-
rum. I like that. It makes things a bit more “real.” How refreshing.
BandJob.com isn’t a contest or crowdsourcing site. Those are sites where hundreds, ifnot thousands, of “designers,” several of whom might be an 11-year old kid with a boot-
leg copy of Adobe® Creative Suite®, submit designs and hope to win the gig. These
projects are the buck and a quarter type of job with little, if any, input from the “client.”