So I got married...

...and we needed an invite. We wanted something different, something people could keep, something that was kind to the environment... we ended up with a tea towel, The Original Wedding Tea Towel no less. An idea that was received so well we decided to make a mini business out of it.

Working on stuff and filling my resources

I haven't posted anything for a while, everything seems held up by record companies, but I'm pleased to report that in the new year I'll be posting single and album artwork for White Belt Yellow Tag, and single and albums artwork for The Moons. Everything is done and signed off, but we're just waiting for release dates.

In the meantime all this work has forced me to overhaul my resource archive, recently I found this great site and pretty much downloaded everything on it: mediamilitia.com.

So first I'm going to get married, then January there's going to be a whole raft of work coming out of the studio. It's some of my best work, I'm looking forward to sharing it.

Creattica Submission

Good news, the Real to Reel logo has been accepted as a submission on the Creattica site. Have a look and comment or 'favourite' it.

Real To Reel Media Logo

Another week, another logo brief and for another film company. They're through the same contact, if you're wondering, I supposed if you deliver so hard on a brief, the chances are they're going to want use you again. Here's my brief:

"Its for: Real To Reel Media. Its a community media project, working with the youngsters and do Film, Music tech, Dj'ing, Graffiti and that sort of thing.

Also do evaluation and consultation work etc. So it needs to appeal to the youngsters and a couple of suits that commission consultation, diversionary activities and projects etc."

I thought I might go through the process for a change. So Stage 1, was to draw the tape and the reel, I did this using a few different scripty fonts, and drew the paths to join them up in Illustrator.



Stage 2 was to incorporate the word 'Media' in there. It needed to be something big and bold to offset and anchor the floaty type above it.



Stage 3 was to refine the top script and make the second 'R' more defined as it was getting lost in the scrawl of the previous versions. I also put some gradiated tone into the Media.



Stage 4 was probably the most important stage, this was to spell the name of the company right. In my haste and excitement I'd not read the brief properly. Oh the shame.

James Lockey Films Logo

The brief for this was nice:

"I like columbo and the 70's right through to that cool fella who does the 70's pharmaceutical design/branding."

He was of course talking about Geigy, so a bold simple approach was needed and has been delivered.

You can see some of the work JLF are doing here.

White Belt Yellow Tag: Remains Single Cover

The White Belt Yellow Tag train is picking up speed, with plays on Radio 1 and being picked put as a "band to watch" in the NME the future looks bright. Their album is out later this year and this single 'Remains' is out in August.

For the artwork I've continued along the path set by the previous single 'Tell Your Friends' the idea was to find diagrams of the dissolution of atoms and trace the paths as they wear themselves down to nothing, I've looked at so many of them now I couldn't tell you exactly what this one is called, but I nearly wore myself down to nothing redrawing it in Illustrator. It looks great zoomed right in though, take a look.

The next challenge is the album cover, I need to take this style and move it forward to a higher level. Watch this space.

And yes, I am really enjoying white borders on my single and album artwork at the minute, it's fun to challenge the printers to position it properly.

Let's go back...

When the Moons came to me to ask for artwork for their new single 'Torn Between Two' I knew my current trend of vector based, psychedelia wasn't going to work with their unashamed, classic-60's pop sound.

After hearing the record I wanted to create something that if someone found the 7" in a record shop and listened to it, they'd have no idea what year it was recorded until they checked out the date on the back. That's the vibe you get from the music so I wanted this to follow through with the artwork. It was all about looking back while avoiding any pastiche or cliché of the 60's. This lead me to a style that i used to play about with all the time about 6/7 years ago, that of one of my only real 'design' hero, Saul Bass.

I decided on a mono theme, and this, together with the framed artwork gave the piece a real classic underground 60's feel. I was particularly happy with the typesetting on the reverse;



And finally to give the whole thing a blast of colour I've coloured the 7" labels red, again I'm very pleased with the typesetting here, I've switched the colours round on each side to give them some distinction;



The single is out on Acid Jazz Records in September.