Fun and Excitement…

Building a Brand…

Right now Steph and I (mostly Steph) are building the Poker Boy brand. In all the years I have been writing Poker Boy stories (since 1987), I have never been able to come up with a look, a brand look, for Poker Boy. At times, his stories had covers that sort of illustrated an event in the story.

At one point we went to these really nifty cartoon covers designed by comic writer Lee Allred.

Then we gave up on those and I started putting really wonderful fantasy women on the covers.

So with a bunch of brainstorming and just standing back and asking basic questions, we came up with a look for four new major Poker Boy collections, and the look will also be on the origin novel and its sequel.( This is all for a coming Kickstarter so we have the brand launched completely by the Licensing Expo.)

I had started from the branding side and had come up with a nifty idea for what would look great on a sweatshirt and mugs and so on. Even found the art details. Steph went at the book covers as her focus first, and in her wonderful designing of the books, just happened to put the start of the perfect brand across the bottom of each cover.

The moment I saw it I knew we had it. So with one piece of the art I had found for the brand and a fun saying I had come up with, and we had, for the first time since 1987, a look for the Poker Boy brand.

Damn this is fun and exciting.

And by the way, the “Licensing: Building a Brand” first week classes are up. See yesterday’s blog for details. So time to jump into the class. It won’t be as much fun as I had today with Poker Boy, but still it should be a lot of learning.

At some point here, I will show you with covers the process over 38 years the growth and brand of Poker Boy went through. Should be worth a chuckle and a little learning.

Thanks, Steph, for finally after all these years, wrestling this to the ground.  Now to order the Poker Boy sweatshirt I will wear one day at the expo.

And the Pulphouse Thumper sweatshirt as well.

Hmmm, what brand on my sweatshirt will I wear the third day? Oh, yeah, Bryant Street. (grin)

Folks, as a writer from the old traditional days, I can’t begin to tell you how much fun this is and the motivation I get from doing this to keep writing.