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My local government's public information office contracted me to do some fun movie poster-sized prints for the NextCool event promoting Georgia as a destination for filming. Jeff and Sandi at the ACC Public Information Office gave me the directive to start with old freakshow/carnival posters and include specific Athens images they provided. These are what I came up with. It was a lot of fun, and while they sort of morphed into a mashup of carnival posters and vintage travel posters, I think they turned out pretty well. And that's nice because they're like 24" x 36" so any horribleness would be in large scale.

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For the show poster, I knew we needed something fun and quirky - and, you know, holiday themed - and when I imagined those three characteristics, immediately A Christmas Story came to mind (specifically the pink bunny costume). Plus, it gave me an excuse to dust off my pencils and crayons and do some real drawing.

Lately, a good portion of my work has been a little more serious in nature, and that's great. But it's always fun to get to throw out a little something like this when I get the chance.

And hey, if you're near Athens, why not come on out on December 5th and join us?

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I've got some catching up to do here with posting some recent work. Today I'm posting a couple of show posters I put together for my friend Adam Klein. Adam's prefers a rustic, somewhat antique aesthetic that is always fun for me to work with. 

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This is actually a catch-up post. Last October, I had the pleasure of putting something together for Lauren St. Jane and the Dead Westerns for their American Dreams EP. This is the full sleeve design.

For me, it's always an interesting challenge when you attempt to use loaded icons like the Stars and Stripes or terms like "American Dream." What does this phrase mean, exactly? Well, it tends to depends a lot on who you are, doesn't it? For some, the American Dream is something to aspire to, to others an imperialist/consumerist/capitalist abomination. I have to ask whether the artist is being sincere or ironic. I must attempt to communicate those intentions, whichever they may be, in a clear (yet striking) manner. There is certainly a lot of room to err in such situations, and sometimes I think I'm just winging it.

That being said, I decided in this case that I wanted to communicate more of a sense of someone who would describe themself as being patriotic. Someone who proudly holds their hand on their heart at a ball game.

Of course, Lauren (and the Dead Westerns) certainly aim to push the pedal to the floorboard with their amped-up modern country stuff, so I wanted the design to be bold (and thus the old Colt revolver). At the same time, this is not a Toby Keith album (thank the Lord), so I did want to add a touch of something that seemed (at the risk of coming off as sexist) a little more classy and feminine (and thus the flowers).

To me, the design as a whole seems to play with this tension of using such a potentially loaded phrase in an album title. Is the American Dream all daisies and buttercups or is it cold steel? Petals or bullets? Is it both? What does it say about our efforts? About strength? About us?

Hopefully, it just says something nice about the music. I mean, for crying out loud, that's what I was hired to do.

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This poster is 11"X17," and the bird is scan of a quick ballpoint pen drawing I threw together. Unlike a lot of folks, I like yellow a lot. It's great for Spring, it stands out on a wall full of other posters, and as a background color it creates great contrast with the text. Plus, it's kind of absurd.

Of course, I may love yellow because I used to drive this.

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Since we've got the capability to capture sounds and turn them into little ones and zeros, it seemed like a good idea to try and put together some sort of compilation for this year's show featuring all the bands on the bill. 

We tracked all the Fuzzies and Doctor Squid on my old RADAR II rig, and Mark Tulk over at SmallHouse Creative manned the mixing board to make them sound pretty. We tossed in Flesh and Blood's cover of the Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)" and Mark mastered the dang thing, too.

It is the season of giving, after all, so we've decided as a collective group to donate all the sales of these limited edition, individually numbered and stamped EPs to Girls Rock Camp Athens, a nonprofit dedicated to developing female creativity through music. Pretty rad stuff. I decided to get a hold of some printable vinyl-look CDrs and made use of the old "take a piece of typing paper and fold it into a CD case" trick someone way smarter than me came up with to keep the costs down, and I think they turned out okay.

Ummm... holidays!

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See the full gallery on Posterous

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This is some of my recent design work for Sam Heilig's debut EP, Between Here & Home (produced and recorded by my good friend Paul Reeves). I'm really happy with how it turned out, and as always, my goal is to try and make something that looks like the music sounds. 

So if you're wondering what Sam's music looks like, here it is. Of course, if you'd rather just know what it sounds like, he's putting up a track a week building up to his official release show here in Athens on Wednesday, Feb. 24th at Tasty World (with John French and Emily Hearn also joining the bill). I tell you all that in case you see the album cover and want to know what it sounds like, leading you to surf on over to his music page, which in turn leads you to think, "Boy, I sure wish I could see Sam play these songs live."

I'm just here to help.

I appreciate Sam trusting me with his project - it was a blast!

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