22 March 2010
This is a brochure designed for the “i am chris purdie” art show a few months back. This past weekend the brochure and accompanying documentary were released. Check out Chris Purdie’s website for more information and to take a look at some of his other pieces.
See the rest of the brochure after the jump.
15 September 2009
Earlier this year, the super-talented Joshua James called me up asking for some help designing the booklet for his upcoming album, Build Me This. The booklet was based on an old publication from the late 1800s and would be very typographic-driven. Right up my alley, right? So I gladly accepted. Naturally the project soon ballooned and we ended up (re)doing all the packaging, labels, and the booklet.
The photos below are not incredible because I didn’t have appropriate lighting in my house tonight. And the upload warped the colors all weird, but you should be able to get the gist.
We designed the digipack and insert book, CD face, vinyl sleeve, and vinyl face labels. I do say “we” because I want to recognize Joshua’s continual help and direction—as well as his second set of eyes at 4 in the morning before sending off to press. Also, credit to Weston Colton for the photography—much more impressive in real life/real color. Hopefully I can get some pictures soon that do the piece more justice. In the meantime, check out the music (iTunes link again…) because it really is something special. Write home about it, even. I know I did.
02 August 2009
A while back, I designed a little promo/demo piece for/with my good friend, Micah. It’s super weird and creepy and awkward, but there’s something about it that I really quite like—even if I’m the only one. Micah stained the wood and mounted the prints on there. And there’s a CD clip/nipple (i don’t know what they’re called?!) on the back to put the demo disk on. I think it’s a pretty unique demo.
And, speaking of demo, if you are ever looking for someone to score a movie, commercial, motion piece, or otherwise for you… check him out. Even if he wasn’t a best friend and a band-mate for nigh unto a decade, I would (and do) use this guy for all my musical needs. Check this piece out that he did for Jon’s Film is Not Dead workshop… Super8 footage by Leo; Edited and designed, actually, by Micah, as well. (Also, some closer shots of the demo after the jump.) (Also also, isn’t is strangely convenient that those last three links all happen to be stuff that I designed as well… unintentional, believe it or not) (Also^3, that’s my beautiful, giggling, cake-top bride—suzie—in the adidas slip-on’s.)
09 June 2009
I posted yesterday about that 7′ tall banner that I had like a day to design. I forgot about the 15′ tall poster I threw together for Chris Purdie that I was graciously granted all of one lunch break to complete. We’ve made up for that with the months it’s taking us to complete to booklet to go along with the show (currently woring on this…).
photo credits: 1) Chad Keyes; 2) Justin Hackworth; and, of course, 3) all portrait photography used in the design by Leo Patrone
08 June 2009
It’s a bit awkward to photograph a pair of 7′ tall banners in a bland office space and make them look really good, but here they are anyways. I designed these for a convention table backdrop at work a couple weeks ago. Once again, ther was limited timeline (was it one day or two?) and budget—which I’ve come to learn means that I get to do the illustrating. I’ll continue to display and discuss some of the inside|sales rebrand on here, but for now I’ll just note the strong Constructivist overtones used to help convey the notion of a revolution. The visual concept was to blend that with a software-esque design aesthetic… Didn’t nail it, but I think we came to something decent for the time being. And until we do nail it, I think it’s kind of an exciting and fun creative challenge.
31 May 2009
Over the past few weeks, we’ve finally begun to see some of the new branding come to life. These cards, I think, are one of my favorites so far. I love the simplicity of the design because it gets out of the way of the receiver’s experience with the card. Business cards are a tactile experience and these are great to hold—the two kinds of paper, the letter press print, the stiff sturdiness of card… even the audible tone—a hefty smack—with which they land on a desk is really enjoyable.
They’re constructed of a sheet of Neenah Classic Crest Solar White and a French Speckltone Black sheet glued together, with black ink on the front and silver on the back (finally got to try this out… worked perfectly). Beautiful print work—as always—by Bryce at Bjorn Press.
A couple of guys from work took them to a convention back in Boston last week and amidst the various bright, big, and bold design that we did, feedback was that these cards made the most impact. I love that.
28 January 2009
Several blogs have written about the London College of Communication’s exhibit, The Changing Face of Letterpress. And typically I would be content to let the other bloggers handle it, but after checking it out I couldn’t resist pointing out a couple samples that are just so cool to me.
First, I’ve said on here before how into the idea of printing “pixels” I am… A couple times, actually, and here’s another: These alias/anti-alias woodblock prints of the letter “a” are incredible.
cool, right? maybe a little expected? check this…
man! so awesome!! (yes, I know I just used an exclamation mark three times in two sentences… it was on purpose and deserved.)
And in a conceptual continuation of previous work I’ve shown on here, Christian Zuzunga delivers again. I think he’s becoming one of my favorite young designers out there.
And this, just because this is how I’ve felt the past couple days and it made me laugh.
So, if you haven’t yet visited the online gallery of The Changing Face of Letterpress, check it out.
22 January 2009
Here are a couple projects from Jihad Lahham that make me want to die.
09 January 2009
With accessibility of inexpensive/digital recording equipment and home (or even laptop) studios, the rise of iTunes and the fall of major labels, indie bands have saturated the market in the past few years. I think, like in the design world, there are those bands who fight to keep atop the latest trend and may have a several thousand hits of their myspace page (or blog) for a few weeks, but die out quickly because they lack real substance. And then there are some real gems that cause me to praise the restructuring of the music business. Andrew Bird, for me, is one of those artists. He’s “Indie” in the sense that he’s on an indie label—Fat Possum—he records from a barn filled with egg-laying chickens in Illinois, and is generally difficult to classify into a specific genre, but I don’t think he’s the typical, trendy 2008–2009 indie group: there are no neon colors on his albums, few digital dance beats, and, although his jeans appear to be fairly fitted, I don’t know that I would go so far as to call them “skinny jeans.”
At any rate, he’s got an new album coming out in a couple weeks that NPR is previewing right now that is really, really good. I listened to it about three straight times yesterday and know that I’ve barely scratched the surface. Andrew Bird is a true musician and a gifted song-writer. He may not always be on top of my play list, but for the past 3 years or so—starting with a album redesign I did in school—he has been constantly in my play list.
Here’s a shot of the album cover (and inside flap):
This was for a letterpress class and I had a lot of fun doing it. I played a lot with heavy collage (obviously), altered appropriation, and various kinds of half-tone patterns. It may be a little intense and unfocused, but there’s still some things I quite like about it. Everything in the design does have specific relavance to the lyrics of the album, The Mysterious Production of Eggs, and I feel the general tone and method of design and production fits the album—which, by the way, I listened to multiple times a day during the whole course of the project and never grew tired of… great album.
top photo by Cameron Wittig.
09 December 2008
This past summer, my friend Dane Hansen surprised us all and got married. And he did it in typical Dane Hansen fashion: He got Bryan Nivens to take and stylize the photo; he gave me free reign to design the announcement—which was then letterpressed by Rob at Tryst Press; Leo Patrone shot the wedding and the reception; Micah Anderson (along with our myself, Bret Meisenback, and Cedric Anderson) played the wedding march, al a Queen/Flash Gordon; and, finally, the Gatsbys—Micah, Cedric, and Grant Olsen—provided the music at the reception.
Dane, by the way, is an extremely talented designer and flash programmer. He works for Axis 41 in Salt Lake City and helps me out on a bunch of freelance work—including the Film is Not Dead Workshop site, which I just posted on my site, today.
These people—with the exception of Bryan, whom I’ve yet to meet—are the people I generally tackle projects with. Check out their work. It’s great.
Below is a close up of the announcement. It was really fun, challenging, and time consuming to create. Each letter is “hand cut and placed” into the design, using old Type Specimen books that I scanned at ridiculously high resolutions. Some of the lettering was even created for this piece due to missing letters in the samples…
The above photo was snatched from Black Eiffel, but unfortunately the photo isn’t as great as some of the work that’s up now.
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