How to echo to console in Laravel and Artisan?

I was curious, I’m using Laravel and Artisan for my migrations. Is there a method to output information to the console? I can’t seem to find any information on this. For example:

<?php

class Generate_Sample_Users{

    public function up(){

        //Echo to console here
        echo "Creating sample users...";

        $generator = new Sample_Data();
        $user_count = 30;
        $users = array();


        for($i=0; $i < $user_count; $i++){
            array_push($users, $generator->generate_user($i));
        }

        DB::table('users')->insert($users);
    }

    public function down(){
        DB::table('users')->delete();
    }

}

Answer

Don’t know if you are using Laravel 3 or Laravel 4, and if its also possible in Laravel 3, but i found this in the docs.

$this->info('Creating sample users...');

EDIT

If you switch to database seeds you can use this to display a message

$this->command->info('Creating sample users...');