In an ironic twist of fate, the self-promotional postcards I’ve been handing out all week at the HOW conference to direct people to my site – (see below) have apparently (due my my excessive tagging with words related to sp•m and bots etc) triggered google to list my website as “potentially compromised”. It isn’t, (according to multiple malware checks) – so please, still feel comfortable giving me your credit card No.
A set of self-promotional postcards for the upcoming HOW design live conference in San Francisco next week.
I’m honoured to have my poster for Alfred Hitchcocks’ Shadow of a Doubt chosen as a winner in the poster category of Neenah Papers prestigious Un-Show competition, put on each year in conjunction with HOW design Magazine. You can view the winning entries in all design categories here or see them featured in the upcoming issue of HOW. Thanks to everyone who voted and got my poster to the judging round!
Everyones favourite weirdo’s Primus are back on the road again for a set of Spring dates. Once again there will be an exclusive, limited handprinted poster for each night of the tour. The individual posters will be unveiled the night of each show on the Primus facebook page and at Zoltron.com. As usual, Zoltron has put together a formidable list of artists for the spring 2013 series including Emek, Rich Kelly, Todd Slater and Ken Taylor, you can see the full list here.
Amongst the many types of paper rubbish I find myself hoarding with obsessive fascination are fruit labels and price tags, pretty much any small sticker i am able to reasonably remove from something. They get stuck to a sheet of paper hanging on the fridge and as the page fills up, I always see them as some ridiculous ‘banana republic’ homemade version of the military badges on a generals uniform. I’ve wanted to make this image for a while and when I was given the opportunity to make another poster for Primus, I couldn’t have thought of a more suitable name to stick on this fella’s name tag. Fittingly, I was also lucky enough to get the date at a venue called “Revolution”.
My poster for the May 12th date at Revolution Center in Garden City is a six colour screenprint at 18″ x 25″ and is an edition of 200. Handprinted at Bloom Press in Oakland CA.
Green Variant edition of 30 features a hand applied sticker.
Remaining copies are available in my shop. Please click to the images below to view.
Well, at least i’d like to be. I’ve entered a number of poster designs to Neenah Papers’ Un-Show competition, Please take a minute to vote for me Thanks!
The National Poster Retrospecticus is a traveling show of more than 300 hand-printed event posters from over 75 of the most prominent poster designers in the country. Produced by JP Boneyard, the first show was hosted by The Lincoln Arts Project in Boston, Mass., in May 2012. Based on the success and enthusiasm surrounding the event, the show is hitting the road in 2013. A number of my recent posters will be on display.
Here’s a listing of all the dates and locations the posters will be exhibited.
April 3, Select Design, Burlington, VT, April 6, 1975 Gallery, Rochester, NY
April 10, 5 E Gallery, Detroit, MI, April 13, Co Exhibitions, Minneapolis, MN
April 16, Mad Art Gallery, St. Louis, MO, May 3, Upstatement, Boston, MA
April 20, Gallery 5, Richmond, VA
When starting a new poster (or in this case a set of three) I never disregard a bands prior designs oftentimes using them for inspiration or continuity through my design – It makes little sense especially for such an established band like Sigur Ros to jump around styles and themes too much, so I generally try to keep at least a thread of what I see as their look running through my take on the imagery, be it as simple as a color or font choice. I thought I had a pretty good grasp of Sigur Ros’ existing aesthetic, sort of a faded, misty look with a touch of psychadelia thrown in. Friendly handwritten type and boats, birds and butterflies – A lot of them. Not that memorable or exciting really but I could see how it meshed with the ethereal nature of the music. I got to work.
The word ‘ros’ is icelandic for rose which in my first comp makes for a seafaring night sky whilst simple ink marks exploding from the domeless venue reference the northern lights, geysers and volcanos of Iceland, a nod to their homeland and the spontaneous, painterly feel to the music. I was a little surprised to receive quick feedback that they were “too cute” which told me a little, but not really that much.
For the next round of comps I used statue faces as sort of surreal landscapes inspired by the otherworldly natural features of Iceland. Taking a cue from the bands live show I referenced the atmospheric smoke and coloured lighting which became breath coming from the statues mouth, bringing the landscape to life. The birds increase in number as per the show dates (7,8,9) and the type was inspired by the decorative pattern on the front of the Brixton Academy.
I was fairly confident with this set of designs, thinking they worked well as a set and fit the band, so again i was surprised to receive some rather frustrated sounding feedback: “I just wish they would stop trying to design how they think we would want it designed. they should just do their thing, make it as out there as possible really”
Enter; the “brain bugs”. I’m guessing these designs were in part a reaction to how the looming deadline, two rounds of rejections and a lack of inspiration was starting to wreck my head, but they had referenced a previous poster I had made for Jack White so I returned to my fascination with xray film and monospaced type and ended with these cat-scan style images. Hands are pretty creepy sometimes and the brainlike fleshiness of the fingers combined with the cold, clinical (and somewhat ominous) nature of a brainscan make for an interesting combination.
I’ve never been asked to deviate so drastically from a bands pre-existing aesthetic or look and it was a challenging task, in fact i’m still having a little bit of a hard time reconciling these poster images with the band and its music. Over time, every design associated with a band (or product, or company) adds to a visual language and once you learn it, its kind of hard to un-learn. As a designer I found it extra difficult and at times frustrating but in terms of becoming a better designer, i suppose i’m grateful to have had an opportunity to have gone through the process.
