Out of Valentime

It's soul time but not as we know it. and Yes I know I am late. Valentines day started nearly 9 hours ago and these are my submissions for my valentines cards. Soul has some of the best love songs around so I would be a fool not to take advantage of such love to portray the message of love. I spent a few hours this morning doing these while watching Sunday morning political nonsense. I like them but to most they are really boring.

It's not often I do hand done type and I quite like it. It's not like anything I have seen online.  What do you think? Should I do it more? what do you think?

Communication Breakdown; Motown Style

 

 

Imagine doing four different flyer designs for four different events (16 designs in total) and in the end you only really needed to do four different flyers designs for all four events (4 designs in total). That is exactly what happened to my new Client; the Chester Le Street Soul Club. After my message sitting in their inbox for a few months, I got a reply and hurried to make some sexy looking designs to impress.

The client was using templates for flyers and mod based imagery on the facebook page so as a rebrand concept I stripped the colours away and went for high contrast imagery of the soul stars they spin on a regular basis. I had to cover the range of soul music; Stax (Otis Redding/Aretha Franklin) & Motown (The Supremes/Martha Reeves) as well as all of the other various labels who put out Soul (Phillies, United Artists, Atlanic). It's a broad church.

Soul Bass

 Do you like Soul music? of course you do. Do you like Saul Bass? Well I think that you should. if not hand your head in shame. If you have never studied either, read this and then fly my pretties and spread your wings and discover.

I have fused the two in the pieces below. The top one is my favourite posters I have ever made. Motown has played a big part in my life since I bought "Dancing in the street" a two CD compilation of the hits from "Hitsville USA" at the age of 13/14. I could not stop listening to it and it is now one of my Favourite genres. mainly just soul in general having since discovered Stax and the work of Otis Redding as well as Aretha Franklin.

I made these on saturday morning while watching a documentary on Joy Division. as you do. I only really learnt about Saul Bass at college and Uni and found the true meaning of simplistic beauty. Which is something I tried to encapsulate below.

Fractured Magazine

 Over the weekend I gave myself a brief, I gave myself a task, to design a magazine. Just the front cover as an identity breaker. I have started editoral at uni so the next step would be to approach the inside of the magazine but above is the start.

I found a really beautiful typeface in my font gallery which came in three seperate bits. Each letter form was split between the three of them (a normal version was included too). So the idea of seperated and an almost shattered typeface lead me to the name "fractured" as title for the zine, it was based on the style of zines from Wired, Clash or Little White Lies. Hipster but not outsider.

The Images are of some cult figures of TV and music. I would love to read articles on these beautiful people all of which have a close connection to my favourite radio station; BBC Radio 6 Music. I have been influnced by all and I would like to think that if this publication was real that they would like to read it.

an electric approach was needed to reflect the wide range of styles of the people present. the two tone chessboard for the specials front man, the  warm colours for the soul man and the unique DJ listening to her self.

Put the Needle on the Vintage Record

My love of music seems to seep into every post I do and this one is no exception. I have taken it upon myself to start a very expensive hobby; Vintage Record Player collecting. Below you can see my first rescued baby; a Fidelity HF45. She is a early 1970's machine, designed to look like and early 60's Dansette player. Me and my father repaired it as it had a noisey volume knob. It now works fine and looks absolutely beautiful.

Motown in my Town

I was offered by a friend, who had been offered a poster design job, to try out some designs my self to see what I could come up with. So I came up with these six very original designs for the brief that was requested. It was for a Motown and Soul night based in Carlisle, England. My thinking was to get the great giants of those genres into the posters. I went with monochrome images on the basis of soul music is either black and white. He/she is in or out of love (this was the case with many early Motown singles). I am a big fan of soul music and I am really pleased with how these turned out. I am certainly hopeful that these will be used.