I am the Resurrection

This is now my favourite poster that I have done for the Brickyard. Resurrection are a tribute band to the Stone Roses, and I really love the Stone Roses. That first album melted my face the first time I heard it. Also Love Spreads as a single is fabulous.

Last time. they came to Carlisle, my Rival/Friend Wincent Valden did the poster and it sold out before I managed to get to it. Hopefully this time I will get round to getting a ticket before it sells out. Life goals: to create a poster for a sell out show and it be a famous people/band.

The image is Waterfall by the band and works the best as it actually has composition, my other examples or tests didn't have this luxury due to the abstract nature of most of the covers. The type is massive in the James Reay stylee. I always try my best to do this stamp of James. It has also been stamped with a link to my website which has had a little change up. so go, as the Beastie Boys would say, Check Check Check it out!

Who wants books without the looks

When the works was falling down in Carlisle I bought some cheap books for stock images, to cut up and design via collage with. One was a book of images from the 1930's and the other a book of northerners. A selection from each of these books is present in these five covers. 

Using the coloured card, I bought to make business cards with, I Blu-tacked the images onto, scanned them in and added type. I made a mess putting hand rendered or cutting type into letter forms so it made the most sense to do it digitally. They are simple, things but I just wanted to try a combination of digital & analogue.

Bear Tumour's in Mind

 

Luke's Life legacy is a brain tumour charity that I did some work for a little while ago. They asked me to create a mascot for there promotion idea; Lukey Bear. A bear that children take on holiday and take pictures with to promote the charity. Above is the bear that is based on the toy that is sold to make money for the charity. 

With the logo decided on, they wanted a t shirt designing, initially we used a slogan that I coined "Where's the humour, in a tumour". This was later replaced by the much improved committee decided "this little bear is brain tumour aware". Instead of using the much hated Comic Sans MS as the rounded font, arial rounded bold suited it much better. Below is the mock up of the t shirt, which are to be made this Autumn and should be available soon after for purchase.

  

Below are the facebook banners and adverts for the bear as well as the instructions on what to do once you have purchased the bear. Using the same font as the t shirt and the mascot to keep the theme going. I hope that they are increasing sales of the bears.

Bank Holiday Monday Special

 Posters galore for you this Monday. All of the photos used in these posters were taken from vintage issues of NME; most of which I had never seen before, making them more than a pleasure to use & incorporate them into designs. Interstate is the font of choice, which I haven't really used and was reminded of it's existence by the graphic designer and teacher and author Ellen Lupton.  

Admittedly some of these posters are better than the others and some are more interesting than others. but I suppose that's all in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. All of the gigs are real and did happen most of which I would love to of gone to.

Get Loose, Get Loose

On the contrary, to the great song by FFS, Collaborations Do Work. Me and by buddy Vincent of Progression through Inspiration "fame" gone and done a poster for the Brickyard's indie night. It is only second time we have collaborated on a client based project, The first was the first Loose Poster. (I got a thanks on the second, despite not raising a finger on design apart from helping on the ideas).

The collage of indie stars from past and present, in the main is mine. The colours were nicked from my website, because wincent liked it I suppose. handwritting his thing and giant paint splodge is also his doing. A team effort me thinks.

 I have never attended one of these nights despite looking for one to attend ever since my teenage years and I still won't be able to make this one. This is my aim to get to the next one we design Vincent, That is a promise Vincent if you are out there reading this.

If you are in Carlisle and haven't been lease go and tell me what it's like. Plus if you go, it means more business for a place I love to go to.

Book Club : Zapf Dingbats has a use.

David Carson is a man I have covered recently on this blog & how I seemingly used to hate his work, or so is my assumption as I don't recall seeing any of it. In college I was stupid, I could not see for looking. David Carson is now one of my all time favourite designers, up there with Jamie Reid, Chip Kidd & Peter Saville. I have more but the rule of three in literature is stopping me from writing anymore.

Out of control is not a monograph, which I thought it was before I bought it. It is a book that puts into perspective, what Carson meant at the time,  as well as showing the genius' vision for what a magazine with unreadable, in the main, could be. It destroyed, all in it's wake. I love his work for Raygun, hence the reason, I chose this book and not his more famous book "the End of Print" because that only has a chapter on Raygun.

"How can you like something you can't read, idiot?" because design can look beautiful and be madder than a ship's cat even though it fails on the direct level of communication; Don't mistake legibility for communication. Just because you can't read something it doesn't mean it doesn't communicate something. I will leave you with that thought.

PS he is really good with design lecture's so give him a search on Youtube. Informative and funny.

Less musical than Throbbing Gristle

A year in numbers. 12 months in figures. 24 half months in stuff and so on...etc. That is what I wanted to summarize in a report before the third year starts. the big scary final year of university with dissertation.

So in a very similar vain to my manifesto, I have used the same fonts and colours to show the true extent of what my year has been like. Including some facts that you may find surprising. to the extent facts about an up and coming graphic designer can be. I would print these publications but due to not having money or a double sided printer. Come to think about I could print them off when I get back to uni. Not that people would want to buy it but would be nice to have a paper copy.

Book Club - Drawing Music

I saw a sneak preview of this book prior to it's release on the social media platform instagram at 11:30pm and HAD to add it to my amazon wish list before I went to sleep. So a very tired James, spent the next twenty minutes when he should of been asleep adding this to his wish list.

I bought it the following day or two and it was delivered home a while later (it was a preorder) and when I opened it, it was beautifully. A perfect fusion of quirky illustrations of musicians I did know as well as those I did not. It does boast that it is not a professional book on music. It's all humble opinion & favourites.

It is a recommendation for the illustrations alone and expanding your music eclecticism. It's also a Nobrow book and they are beautiful things in general.

 

Bonus: the beautiful man did a mural at the urban outfitters in London. Which I saw while at NME. Their vinyl prices are far too expensive.

  

Film Review - helvetica: the movie

A movie about a font, would bore most common folk but for a designer it is something fabulous. The cream of the crop in the design world all appear to pay tribute to it's beauty or to hate on it. It is EVERYWHERE so it is hard to ignore it's impact.

Is it beautiful because it is neutral? Is it beautiful because it is multi purpose? Is it perfect? These are some of the questions raised in the film by (preapre yourself) Paula Scher, Stefan Sagmiester, David Carson, Designers Republic, Neville Brody & Erik Spiekermann. It has the son of one of it's makers looking over all of the tests before it became a finished font. The full movie is on youtube, which is where I watched it & I reccomend that you do.

4.5/5

Communism had one, so why can't I?

Communism had one. Yeah I own a copy. When penguin released the 80p version of it; in the format of a little black book. I haven't read it yet but the concept is what I wanted to steal. Many artist have written one; a manifesto. There are two reasons to do this; either to be pretentious or to outline your morals/principles as an artist. The reason I did it, was a bit of both. I would like people to know what I am about but in the same vain, it was just to say I have one.

You know what you getting from me as a designer if you read this document before you hire me. I like to think that it makes fairly common sense. have a look and see what you think of it.

Book Club - Importance of Peter Saville

My bible, the holy book, of beautiful post modern record cover design. People who know me, personally, know how much praise I have work the work in this book. Especially, the early work done by Peter Saville. Blue Monday 12" sleeve is the reason that I am in Graphic design. Art over the cost of production. The morals of Tony H Wilson; the subject of a new charity/single by the poet Mike Garry. A beautiful dedication to an awesome man. see below for the original version.

I am preparing an in depth blog post on the work of peter Saville for my university dissertation so stay tuned for that little beauty, it is in the vain of post modernism so it should be a jolly good read.

How did i get into uni?

This is a question, I often ask myself, and to be honest I have no idea. I would like to say it was down to my outstanding grades. It wasn't. I did put a lot of effort into my limited graphic design course, which I am labeling art, sort of. Art, maybe. The anti comic sans course. I will choose one of them.

The only reason I say this as I was sorting through my work and found my portfolio, the very portfolio, untouched, that got me into team grillust, into the next step/branch of my educational adventure. Now by today's standards of my work (not perfect but learning) the pieces in there don't even count as design. The body of work over them ten pages shows a primitive knowledge of Photoshop, an ability to copy/trace pre-existing materials as well as poor type choices.

It is a time stamp. I have just sort of said its bad but it was of its time a brings home the fact that I do not suck as much as my depressed mind sometimes tells me I am. I still love my "Hey Jude" collage, it took hours but just represents how much of a behemoth that song is: especially the LOVE version is.