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.

Tell All Your Friends Single Artwork

I've just completed the first single cover for the band White Belt Yellow Tag. The single's called 'Tell Your Friends' and is out in July on Distiller Records.

The brief for this was; one copy of the album and a love of 'Unknown Pleasures', so this was my starting point and this is what I told the band;

"LORENZO, BOSE and KEPLER.

As a starting point I was directed to ‘Unknown Pleasures’. Showing the death of a star, isolated on a black background, and resized to an underproportioned canvas, it gives omits a coldness and desperation found in the music. (To simply do ‘Unknow Pleasures’ in white, isn’t possible, the black gives it, it’s hostility, without that we’re in dangerous ‘ColdPlay’ terrority.)

Having listened to WBYT I don’t get the same stark vibe, there’s a warmth and a soul to the music that underpins its depth.

So to reflect the brief I’ve gone back to what made Unknown Pleasures an iconic piece of work and applied similar principles to this artwork.

My focus was on your title ‘Ode To Nothingness’. From here I researched the dissolution of atoms (see left). I found numerous graphs, charts, illustrations and theories all about what happens to atoms and particles when they disintegrate, From these I extracted the parts that interested me and evolved them into striking pieces of art."

The result is taken from the Lorenzo Attractor, and it's a study of an atom's path.

In The Beginning

Sorting out some cupboards today, I unearthed what I think is my first official attempt at logo design. It's for my first band 'Gripper'. Now obviously the band never made it out of our garage and the logo didn't get seen by the anyone outside of the band, but all good bands need a good logo right? (Gripper were not a good band).


This second piece shows my early attempt at flyer design, it was for our second band Lincoln and this actually lived to see the light of day, it showcases an interesting use of clip art, thinking back I can't remember what the hotdog symbolised, but it's another stunning piece work.

From what I remember this was a general awareness piece, and we gave them out in town on a Saturday then went home and sat by the phone waiting for people to call. Amazingly we did get one response, and we honestly didn't know what to say so we just hung up. Not a watertight marketing strategy I think you'll agree.

Everyone's got to start somewhere I suppose, I've come a long way.

RecordBox Brand

Sometimes when you're working on a logo for so long you can't see what's in front of you, a good example would be this logo for RecordBox. I wanted to highlight the concept that all the letters were made out of circles, to symbolise records, but it wasn't until I posted it on Twitter and asked for some feedback that it was pointed out to me that it looked like a pair of breasts. So I dropped the dots.

RecordBox is a development project that should be ready to launch later in the year, I'll keep you all posted.

The compression on the eBlogger image uploader has made it look a bit crusty, click here to see the Hi-Res version.

Hip, Hip Hooray

Good news! My brother's getting married this year and as part of my Best-Man duties I was assigned the task of designing the invite. To be honest I get offended if any of my friends get married and don't ask me to do that.

They wanted a very English theme, inspired by The Kinks and 'Village Green Preservation Society', so bunting, birds and Hip, Hip, Hooray's were the order of the day. It's going to be a fantastic day, and you can only imagine how nervous I am delivering a Best-Man speech to a room full of comedy writers, 'boo'ed' and 'off' spring to mind.

The illustrations are all handdrawn in Illustrator. Originally they were going to be Screen Printed, so I wrestled with the artwork to keep it in as few colours as possible, I managed to limit it to 4, but it could have been 3. However costs forced us into more conventional print methods and it ended up being digitally process printed. The finished result still looks great and everyone seems really happy with them.

Hi Res version here.

New Label New Danger

Another day another free brief.

Well it's been a while since I did any Citizen work. I've been busy buying a house and making a baby and in the background of all that I thought I'd concentrate on my proper job so I could afford it all, but I've got a few Citizen projects coming up again, and nothing makes me happier then delivering on jobs like these.

the logo is for a label set up in Northampton UK, by Neale Tidd and Jamie Johnston, it's always a pleasure to help people out who are trying to help people out. I'm really happy with the results.

‘Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.’ is a quote from Mark Twain, I thought it worked really well to offset the punk vibe of the logo.