Musician and Designer rolled into one Human: Part Two.

So yesterday I talked about what I did and then threw out the window. Today I am going to talk about what the work looks at the minute. Half of the music I still need to record and all of the music I need to render and actually burn to disc so the design has been doe before the music. That is a weird way round admittedly but it may change again.

I only recently fell in love with the work of Barney Bubbles so maybe I didn't understand his work enough to do a spin on it. What I knew I understood was punk which was a catalyst for me getting into design. I have ripped it off so many times but this time I really wanted to do something with it.  Something physical; I got a book for Christmas which is scans of man's collection of punk flyers, posters, album covers and it was a very physical thing. The message was in the music put was also in your hand with the fanzines.

My first approach was drawing the song titles again in black fine liner on white post it style notes. This suffered the same problem as the first versions. Try and order a bunch of squares into a comprehensible order for a track listing. No no not working.

 

So instead of typographic illustrations I just went screw it! I'll just write the song names. Hey, that looks good. It looks a bit bare. What if I scribble the song illustration next to it. Perfect. Song listing sorted. I then had an idea (two in one blog post) Four Tracks that we'd recorded as a band they could go on one EP and then the rest of the tracks could go on EP two...but what do you call EP Two. Where could you wake up? In a bed? The wrong side of the bed? Perfect!

Front Cover for EP 2 was easy but one was harder. I tried replicating the last one but it looked ugly so went for a hangman type thing where all of the letters are Z's replacing the correct letters of Waking Up. 

Below are my mock ups of the front and back cover. 

To add a bit more gravitas to this was to scan the covers in and then print them out on coloured card and then build the digi pack for them. Going back to having something physical and something unique. There will only be one digipack made like the one in your hand. 

So that's my journey to get to an album cover I like, the music is coming soon and thank you so much for reading.

*disclaimer waking up on the wrong side of the bed is not a political metaphor and is not me telling you that I woke up a tory one morning. The wrong side of the bed is an anger metaphor.*

Musician and Designer rolled into one Human: Part One.

I am a musician, sorry I am a man who plays music but I am also a designer. Knowing music like I do I understand the importance of the marriage of the two. Now imagine you have to design for your own music.

That's the crisis I found myself in at the end of last year as I was putting together a collection of songs that I had recorded. I played around for ages in sketchbooks trying to work it out and I settled on a style not dissimilar to the work of the great Barney Bubbles. I'd fallen in love with a font called 'Compacta' and that's how I was going to do it.

Using the bright colours and play that Barney Bubbles had in his work (for Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and Hawkwind), I was going to produce a small illustration for each of the songs. These would be arranged on the back cover in track order. Presented below are what I was thinking.

For the front cover; I put the emphasis on play. I wanted to call the album 'Waking Up', as in waking up to the world; politically, emotionally and just in general waking up because we all do it on a daily basis. If you are reading this, you have woken up at some point today. Anyway...in a little brain storm session I had with myself; sleep > snoring > zzzzzzzzz. This was to be the cover;

 However after problems with arranging the tracks on the back cover, having doubts with the front cover and the option to re-record some of the tracks with a band (of my Dad and Bro); I fell out of favour with these designs.

Graphic Designer, Musician, Cherry Bakewell Lover, #Grillustetc

Graphic Designer, Musician, Cherry Bakewell Lover, etc; best blog post title ever I think. All of these things I am and more. Thats the point of the etc. And that's why our final year exhibition at university is call that. We are all doing the same course, Grillust, but we are so much more than that. and on the 4th June 2016, we will show you prove to you all, that this is true.

I went to university to study a course, to get the knowledge and the qualification that comes at the end of it. But I have ended up learning so much more than the tools of the trade and I believe that a lot of other people have too. I have made life long friendships (I hope), I have leant how to live away from home and that anyone can do a university course; but making the most of it, is more important. That's what Tdawg always said and I still hold that to be true.

Anyway, I am writing this as an in direct invite to the opening night of exhibition on the fourth or the whole following week where it is open to the public. Design in a gallery can be confusing as it removes it's context but don't worry we have beautiful illustration to counterpoint this. If you love design, love illustration or just curious come along. We don't bite.