MidwestLove Art & Design

Ok, this is a little bit of self promotion as my band Venna is also playing the show this poster is promoting, but I was pretty pleased with how this came together so I wanted to post it none the less. Plus, it bears the name of one of the most prolific, intelligent, well spoken songwriters to ever pick up a guitar and I can’t help but bragging that I got the chance to put his name next to my band’s on a poster… next to a little guitar that I drew, none the less. I feel like I won a contest or something!

This was intended to be a 3 color silk screen, with two color options printed side by side on an 11×17 (double the promo per page!). I’m not sure which color scheme I like better…

And here’s the original illustration of the guitar, just cause it will never show up in it’s entirety anywhere else but my sketch book.

In all seriousness, this guy’s music is absolutely unparalleled in my life as far as meaning, inspiration and longevity. It was an honor to do this piece. Hopefully I did it justice. So let me know what you think, and grab one if you see them posted up anywhere!
-marky

Today I sent off the CD packaging for one of my favorite local bands, Kid, You’ll Move Mountains. This is a veritable super-group of talented musicians formed from members of the bands Troubled Hubble, El Oso and Inspector Owl, the latter two I’ve had the honor of not only designing for in the past, but seeing play many times and getting to become great friends with over the years. Needless to say, this project was an immense amount of fun and it’s always rewarding to design for a band that you’ve got a personal stake in.

This was done as an eco-wallet, so the front and the back covers could be comprised of one seamless image, like so…

There were a few different renderings done with typesetting added to the back, but when it came down to it, both the band and I agreed that the piece spoke much louder without any song titles or typesetting at all. The initial whale illustration actually came from a rejected concept for the From The Headline project. The band suggested the idea of having various items coming from inside the “belly of the whale”… a concept I was happy to run with.

Here’s the interior. All of the illustrations were done with pen, scanned and painted in photoshop. I actually did about 20 different spot illustrations, but these were the ones that I either liked the best, or just felt right. I especially liked the camera…

Overall, I was incredibly pleased with the way this project came together, but the toughest thing was actually trying to work around the unusual amount of punctuation in the bands name… I was pretty proud of this solution-

 That’s all for now. Should I start posting pictures of the actual printed pieces? Would anyone be interested in that? Let me know.

12/9 Update- got the CD’s back yesterday and they look rad. I’ll post pictures soon. Also, there’s a really nice interview with Jim from KYMM over at The Deli and he spends some time talking about the album art. Check it out!

-marky