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.

Walk out to Winter

 

 Illustrator is not my strong point but this was good practice. I had the idea while being ill myself to come up with the best ways to have fun while you are ill and these where the best ones that I came up. As you can see that they are very clearly inspired by the original itunes and iPod advertisements. simplicity was very key in this as well as recognizably.

Try these out next time you are ill or have a cold and PS don't blame me.

Carson, Not Even Once

At this stage in my graphic design career had never heard of David Carson, the master of grunge typography and the publisher of raygun magazine. I simply knew how to manipulate things in photoshop and thought what I can do with images I can sutrely do with type. So I did and these are the results. 

As I have developed an interest in type, I can see that they have carson written all of over them. He knew nothing about type when he made his pieces and at this stage (late college) neither did I so I once had something in common with a typographic genius. He broke the rule and and I may very well of done but how could I know I was breaking them without knowing of there existence.  This means that I can become one too. Maybe. Probably not. but maybe.

It's Trippy

Looking through my laptop I discovered a photo of me that was taken for a film poster last year as part of my friends university project. I was very reminiscent of the pose struck by an actor on a Paula Scher Poster. So decided to add colours and make an interesting composition much like the poster that I've referenced. Not using type but using more of me. This is the only piece that uses so many multiple images of me that I can think of in recent times.

a Long time in the making

 

This poster ws completed a month ago but has only officially hit the streets in the past weeks. It is the final poster for The Voyeurs show at the Brickyard. It took a long time due to the lack of band management. I made a much more effective previous poster but the band wanted to change the image so I had to start again. This poster has no imagination or beauty to it, it simply does the job and that's all that matters in the end.

Stand by more gig posters on the way...WATCH THIS SPACE.

The Big Reveal

Its all been very quiet on my blog recently but don't worry, its not because I don't love you people its because I have had a very stressful week taking photographs for my uni project. I thought I that I would use this opportunity to reveal, since it is nearly halloween, my costume. Prepare to start singing hits like "Jean Genie", "Drive in Saturday" and "Panic in Detroit". I am dressing up as a personal hero; David...Boowie? David Bowie. I mean....or do I?

formed a band and had loads of good fonts

 

if typefaces were instruments they would probably would read like this. The typeface is in red and the additional characters that they require to name the instrument. enjoy.

Love Is Love

Love is love, imagine being told you can't love the person you love more than anyone in the world simply because they are of the same sex as yourself. Love is all you need, the Beatles were right. Many people daily are feeling the effects of homophobia; verbal abuse, Physical abuse as well as sexual abuse and it's not fair. Society has come along way but it still needs to go further. No one should have to suffer because of love. It is universal, we all feel it for various things and a significant amount of people feel it for others. I love Music and Graphic Design and Cherry Bakewells. I love my friends; some of which who actually suppressed who they were through fear of homophobia.

I have lots of causes that are close to my heart and I want to promote them through my blog. Click and Share and we can promote equality in society. STAMP OUT HOMOPHOBIA.

State of the Nation: Part 2

 

My last post on this subject got a great amount of coverage and success and I liked the idea very much. Having never read 1984 by George Orwell, I love the idea of the dystopian future ruled by the goverment, the thought of seeing these propoganda around us in the vintage 30's style would be amazing. However, in that situation I would be incapable of free thought and I would not be able to enjoy them as musch as I do know. The idea of these REALLY existing is laughable.Hope you like them. I do also enjoy controversial design hence some of the language I have used here is of that ilk. 

Life Begins at the Hop but Charity begins at Home

"My Brother was diagnosed with Arthritis a number of years ago and at the time he did not get the right support and was lead down a number of wrong paths which only caused him more distress. This charity has been set up to help parents and children through the diagnosis and treatment of Arthritis. They have got my support because I don't want anyone to feel like him and my parents did." - me

I was given a design job to design a banner/car sticker for a charity that was set up to put Arthritis in children on the map because people think that is only a disease that effects the elderly. Within weeks of communications and tweaks a final design was set up and ready for action. It was sent into the final in the design competition but with no overall winner they are yet to be printed. I hope that one day they will be and the promotion of the cause will be raised. It means a lot to be that people don't suffer like my brother did. 


http://www.nras.org.uk/ is the parent website to the organization

All My Colours

 

Tumblr is a great source of images of the things that you love and when I stumbled across two images of one of my heroes, that were really very good; too good in fact not to do something with. The photos were of Ian McCulloch, the lead singer of one of my favourite bands, Echo and the Bunnymen. I chose to screen over some of the lyrics from one of the gloomiest songs due to the atmosphere in the pictures.

the Bad, the Font and the change of opinion

 Bauhaus 93, I hate you. You are considered a cool and very fun and original font. I have seen you used on clubs and bars and posters. The general public uses you all the time but you have no redeeming features. You look nothing like any that was ever used by the Bauhaus school. the school that is one of the most important designs schools on the planet. ever. The Nazi's didn't like them but I do.

So I decided to take a stand and try and improve the reputation of the font as a mission. By making these typographic illustrations. The redeeming features of the font is that it bold and strong shapes to it thus making it easy to create images using the letter forms. This self initiated project is reminiscent of a type project that I did at uni and for the first week I did the project completely wrong. I was simply meant to make a pattern out of type and not an image.

Text is Motion

 

Text is a marvelous. Text is diverse. Text is fun. Text can demonstrate motion. That's what the above is all about. Words that normally just state what they mean, I have tried to demonstrate what these words mean. I chose a grey scale tone as not to distract from the message that I am trying to portray. Legibility in some of these are harder than others but hopefully all are still readable.

(Click the images for a closer inspection)

Back to Front, Front to Back

"Inspiaration have I none" is something that I have never said apart from when singing alng to David Bowie (wuzza Wuzz). My inspiration here was Tumblr; the website full of Hip, cool and young people, sharing images of funny animals, Fandoms and Mozza. I use it for mainly design and music.

Perspective, its all about it in these images. I have created a set of shapes that are all made of the same composite shapes but arranged in such away different images are made. If you look carefully; 2 repeats can be seen.

Scot Scot (a Man called Scot from scotland)

Scotland, I fear will leave the UK. Mr fish (Salmond) won the last debate and is currently neck and neck in the polls with Darling (Alistair). As a resident of England, I don't want them to go. I love certain parts of that place north of the border. They have great record stores, nice towns and the parliment building is beautiful. I don't want to need a passport to go there.

However, I would like them to go just to see the chaos that it would cause down in west minister. they refuse to make a Plan B if they do leave. They need to think of money, trident and powers. it'll be hilarious to see them all running around like headless chicken.

Scotland; a study of the people can be seen below. I made these this morning, in a satirical way to show what the Scots may be thinking right now.