02 April 2010
I’m currently working on the brand and other promotion material for Tough Guy, USA—the U.S. franchise of the infamous race of death over in the United Kingdom. Check out the video above to have your mind absolutely blown away. … I’m still reeling.
This should be a fun project.
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.
13 September 2009
A while ago, I posted a couple things about an art project that I did design for, titled I am Chris Purdie. Just tonight I found this video that explains and documents it better than I ever attempted to do on here. It’s pretty interesting, I think. Check it out if you have a few minutes (or 7). I’ve been told that catalogs have been printed, but I’ve yet to receive them. As soon as I do, I’ll post some images on here. Until then…
chrispurdie.com from skylerjeppson on Vimeo.
06 July 2009
Recently Shepard Fairey released his “FREEDOM TO LEAD” poster of Aung San Suu Kyi. His work is, as always, extraordinary and charged with tones of revolution and it’s great to see him helping out another great political cause—one that needs all the publicity it can garner.
A couple years ago, the US Campaign for Burma asked me to create a logo for them to commemorate her birthday and to try to raise awareness of Suu Kyi’s situation. I don’t know to what extent it was used (beyond a shirt and some patches that are pictured below)—although I did see a picture of a wall in Thailand tiled with wheat-pasted posters of it not long after I finished it.
The brief was two-colors max and simplified and iconic enough to be reproduced at small sizes. We tried to capture both her determined strength and her soft, motherly side. There was no budget, so the type had to be created by hand, as well. Anyways, not to compare mine vs. his, but… here’s mine, and (obviously) above is his.
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
06 May 2009
Over two years ago I started working on a cartoon short called “Children Kids” with some friends of mine. Progress is really slow, but recently evidence has surfaced that there is indeed progress. And lots of it!
This particular piece is about a happy little boy named Zak who gets his Big Mac™ stolen by a bully named Jack. Have a look…
21 February 2009
For those of you who have kept your distance from this blog because it crashed your browser and/or computer, (first: sorry, but) rest assured: it’s safe to come back. We’ve turned off the sifr that was apparently causing all the problems. Until we can get that figured out again, we’ll just all have to make do with Arial.
I got a job. A real, full-time, designer job. Which is cool, but I’ve been super swamped getting up to speed there, as well as finishing freelance work after hours. Here are some of the projects I’ve been working on:
I’ve been working on preliminary ad design for the “i am chris purdy” show happening March 6th at the Sego Arts Center here in Provo. If you’re in the area, expect to see a lot more of this coming soon.
You may recognize Leo Patrone’s work in the photo shoot above (both he and Jon Canlas loaned their services and expertise to the Chris Purdy shoot). Leo just launched his updated site that I’ve been tweaking and updating for the past little bit. And Dane, as always, did masterful work with the flash design. We have a lot more work to accomplish in the next few months that I’m really excited about diving into. And as soon as we get some photos of Leo’s new business card, I’ll post that here, too. It’s pretty hot. Rob, at Tryst Press, letterpressed them beautifully. If anyone is looking for a photographer, Leo is a very special and amazing talent. Catch him while you can.
Thanks to Jon and Leo, I’ve had lots of opportunities to work with photographers over the past couple years. Mark Weinberg is another that I’ve worked with who produces amazing work. He’s releasing some post cards soon that we just finished up a couple days ago. I’ll let you know if and when and where you can see them and/or get your hands on them. They’re simple and beautiful and, naturally, have some great photos on them. Most, by the way, do not have type on the front.
That’s all the work I’m going to post today. I’ll post soon about the album cover I’ve been working on for Joshua James, as well as some fun and exciting design I’ve ran across in the past few weeks.
02 February 2009
It’s been almost a year and a half since I started working with Jonathan Canlas—a renowned film photographer from Utah. After admiring his images from afar for some time, it was a great opportunity to get in and work with them. Since then, we’ve produced the Film is Not Dead website, the Film is Not Dead workbook (images coming soon both here and on my site), we’ve rebranded him, created an updated portfolio site, and another promotional book (again, I’ll have images of that up here soon)—not to mention various collateral and pdfs and so on and on.
Today, information on Jon’s Film is Not Dead 3 workshop was announced and will be held in beautiful San Francisco this coming July. If you’re into photography and you want to learn a TON—check it out.
And, Jon— thanks for letting me explore my creative vision along side yours.
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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