MidwestLove Art & Design

Here are some fairly decent pictures of the physical copy of Kid, You’ll Move Mountains “Loomings”. Thanks to Jim from KYMM for getting me a few copies as soon as they came in. I must say I’m pleased to death with how this project came together. All in all, from the concept, to the final print, to the music contained within, this is a great piece.

I’ll start posting more physical pics of the projects as I get them in.  I always mean to, but I don’t always get samples back from bands in a timely fashion… hint to any of my bands reading this who haven’t yet sent me my samples! As always, feel free to leave comments. Also, go get your hands on the new P.O.S. album “Never Better”. You won’t be sorry.

-marky

Texan power-pop engineers Seymoure contacted me to put together something for their upcoming album “Pretending It’s Casual”. They wanted the visuals to be organic, but whimsical and (of course) featuring animals.

This was done in the same style as the This Is The Shiver cover art, with water color painted cutouts, double sided tape, and minimal digital manipulation. Here’s some other pieces from the project-

 Above, Interior Panel

Below, Disc Face & Tray

I was able to do a full color disc, which was fun and pushed the concept a little bit further. Taking a second look at it, I wish I would’ve made the logo a bit bigger on the disc, but… c’est la vie. There’s always at least one thing on every project that you wish you could get back.

Here’s a better look at that sweet word mark… this was my favorite part of the project. The band actually ended up adopting this as a full time logo.

Also, I found this awesome rough concept sketch as I was deleting files and thought I would share it with you… ha ha.

 From this concept sketch, I determined the individual pieces
I needed and I drew them on regular sketch book paper to get the
shapes looking good. When I had gotten the shapes just right, I cut them all out. Then I painted full sheets of color wash and used the sketch book paper cutouts as guides to cut out the final pieces. Then those were all layered together and affixed to more painted backgrounds via double sided tape and then finally scanned. After some digital lightening and darkening of appropriate areas and layout adjustment along with the typesetting, we have the cover shown at the top of the post. The final version actually came out pretty close to that concept sketch, save for the background color.

As always I’m curious to hear everyone’s feedback, so let me know what you think of this one. Also, I have some big, big projects coming up soon, and some potentially interesting announcements concerning the future of MidwestLove, so keep checking back.

-marky

After a chance meeting on AIM, I was hired to do a 1-up tshirt design for Wisconsin pop-punk band Fast Forward To June . They gave me free reign to come up with a concept, so I challenged myself with the question, “what’s the coolest possible thing that I can draw?” Behold the results. Apparently the part of me that determines what’s cool is still eight years old.

3 colors on American Apparel gold T.

-marky

Tshirt illustration for my (other) band The Felix Culpa. The concept initially came from an idea my friend Timothy gave me almost 6 years ago. It stuck with me and I finally got a chance to use it.

2 colors on maroon (pictured) and charcoal gray shirts.

-marky

Following the theme of the Kid, You’ll Move Mountains album art (see two posts down), but with a bit of a different twist. This will be printed on oatmeal speckletone paper for extra goodness. I’ll see if I can get some pictures of the final prints when they come in.

-marky

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

Here’s a poster I just finished up for eccentric Chicago band Berry’s upcoming show at the Empty Bottle. This was drawn and textured in Illustrator. I’d love to have an opportunity to do more fun illustrated projects like this.

I think this guy was my favorite…

I’m pretty excited about this one. A while back, the incredibly soulful young chauntreusse Kelsey Wild commissioned us to do a website for her. We initially went ahead with a design that was based on real life photography of Kelsey cut out and placed among black and white sketchbook-esque drawings of natural scenery and animals. We got as far as having a hired photographer do a shoot, doing all of the illustrations, and actually coding out and almost getting ready to launch the site when Kelsey had some second thoughts about the whole idea. The look was pretty cool in and of itself, but she didn’t feel it represented her aesthetic sense as an artist, which is always our first and foremost goal when associating imagery to a person or band. It has to be something they feel comfortable putting their name on. Naturally Kelsey and I went back to the drawing board and she came up with some great ideas about going more organic and handmade, rustic but not country. So here’s what I came up with…

I constructed six differnt “found art” collages comprised of various pieces of junk, bits of paper, old receipts, scraps from heather’s sewing table and other random objects that I found laying around my house. I then photographed them and strung them all together in Photoshop to make a continual horizontal image, which would actually be about six feet long if laid out in real life.

Click on this to see the full image…

The website will scroll horizontally when a navigation button is clicked and each collage will act as a frame for the content at that location. It will make more sense when it’s completed… Anyway, this was incredibly fun and definitely a challenge, as I’ve never done anything like this before.

The office took the biggest hit-

I’ll make sure to post when the site goes live.

-marky

New Illustration for Snapdragon Records “Halloween Massacre” show poster. Just thought it would be in the spirit (no pun intended) of the upcoming Halloween season to share it with you. This was inked with a regular fine tipped sharpie and colored in Illustrator.

Here’s the full poster-

What is everyone going for this halloween? I’m making my kids each their own WALL•E costume, and I’m pretty excited. Maybe I’ll post pictures of those here when they’re done.

-marky