Screen Printing, Silk Screening, Magic Poster Making — whatever it's truly called; here's a post full of it.

As you may have seen from my constant ranting on, or a previous post; I designed a poster for Skindred and they got in contact with me to explain how much they liked it and asked if they could have some prints.

Well, to be honest, I was blown right out the water by this. I hadn't really had anyone come back to me with such delight or even anyone really explain to me that they really liked the outcome of one of my posters before—and especially not from such a large band.

 They were firstly just asking for copies of the posters I made, but I felt that wouldn't show my appreciation for their shown appreciation, (if that makes any sense) so I decided I'd make them some screen prints.

And if you've already seen the poster I needn't waffle on, but I will make it clear that I really enjoyed making them, and will continue to make screen prints, if and when needed; as they are bloody good fun!

You may notice the tail of a beast in this image, further down it'll become more apparent why.

I decided to make them in the colours of the poster, but not identical to the poster. I went with the idea of making three green, three red and you guessed it, three yellow so that they all had a print that would be 1 of 3 and so they could choose which colours they each wanted.

I signed them, and numbered them and watched my ego grow and grow.

I left the poster on the table for a second to go pee, and I came back to this.
She can't help herself.

As a final note, I'd like to say a massive thank you to Natalie (studio technician and general printing wizard) for helping me make them!

Calling out to the New Students of Carlisle!

Today, after a visit of a dull and empty looking studio myself and James thought that we should make a poster to advertise The Brickyard, and help spruce the place up. 

Not only did we want to do this because we are bored as hell, but also because we love The Brickyard and being poster designers for there, and fans of the acts they put on, we want the venue to last and be able to get more and more acts.

We thought about it and realised that it really is our favourite venue in Carlisle and also noticed that a lot of our fellow designers like to attend gigs there too. So we thought, well what about all the new students, they need to know about this lovely place too!

All that aside, the main reason we made this is because we wanted to post up and show off our posters around our campus, and after talking to Mark (from The Brickyard) we were informed that he was no longer allowed to put posters from their in the campus.

Not only was our ego battered a little bit, and we felt a little disheartened, we realised something more important. If the massive influx of student don't know about The Brickyard, then we'll possibly be out of design jobs, great gigs and even better times.

So this was our super cheesy solution.

Coming to wall of a bathroom near you!

Our solution probably isn't the greatest solution, but it's totally worth a shot.
If the poster isn't actually done or made by The Brickyard, but instead a student, then I should be fine to sit within the confines of the campus.

So after a little research, some textures, a cheesy photo and a few free hours—The image above is our final result. We'll see how long this actually lasts on the walls, but I love this venue and I'll do my best to keep like-minded people going and help generate business to keep great bands playing!

And finally this sounds a little audacious, but I know the two gents of Snask support my feelings for this lovely place, and if they see this, HELP A BROTHER OUT!

Britton for Britain.

Just a quick one this time.

I was contacted by my friend Emma Whitaker who is a very good Downhill rider, but is having to film other very good Downhill riders because she was being a very good rider in a very good riders contest and then became a very good rider out of control and wrapped around a tree.

Actually I made up the tree bit, but I imagine it was something to that same idea of pain.

Anyway, after babbling on she had contacted me because she wanted a little bit of typography done for a short trailer she is making for her friend and fellow rider Jonny Britton.
So I threw around some ideas with her and decided to help create a small bit of branding for him; as the trailer is designed to get him noticed and recognised in the downhill scene.

I tried to create some branding because his surname is Britton, and he'll be racing in Britain.
This doesn't sounds like too much of an issue, but because of the way our brains work; instead of reading each single letter to read the word, we read the first few and then link it to words we already know.

And because I helped with this so he could be noticed, I thought we should make his surname a little bit of branding just to illimate the problem of people just seeing 'Jonny Britain' instead of 'Jonny Britton, talented downhill rider'.

A test image of the final product to explain what I'm raving on about.

The trailer itself is titled "Jonny Britton – Try Harder" because he has to always try harder and harder, until he reaches the point where somebody finaly goes, GOD DAMN THAT YOUNG MAN IS TALENTED AND I SHOULD PAY HIM LOTS OF MONEY AND BUY HIM MANY MANY BIKES!

But anyway, it was a lot of fun and I loved to try and help him on his way and will happily do so until the point where he is nailing it down Fort William with some super expensive bike with 24-carat plated bars (or something crazy like that).

Have a look and this good man!

I do not dread design for Skindred

Early this week I saw that The Brickyard had announced the booking of Skindred, so I messaged Mark straight away and asked whether he had anyone designing the poster as yet. Luckily for me, he hadn't hired anyone for the job just yet, and so I snapped up the opportunity.

I started the design process by looking at the style of the band, and their influences, their previous posters and their self-listed genres. I already knew a little about their style but I realised that they have a range of genres listed, that I was unaware of. So I researched more about the style of design in Metal, Hip-hop, Punk and Reggae; even though I had a good idea about design in some of those genres due to a musical education I have received from my buddy James.

I had received their logo, and their most recent album art work—of which the tour is to celebrate. I firstly played around with those images to get my idea of structure off my sketchbook page and onto my computer. After a short while of trying to incorporate professionally created fonts, I realised it just didn't work and set on to incorporating hand drawn text into the poster because it fits my structure better but also it fit's the genre and style that the band are.

The main styles I wanted to display and include are the colours from the album cover; the colours of the reggae genre, the roughness and hand-made ideology of the punk scene, the darkness and distressed feel of the metal scene and the imagery of the hip-hop genre.

I hope all my ideas are shown present in this.

In the end of the design process; I really like this poster and I have been informed by the bands promoter that the band also do. They have asked me if they can have some prints made of this poster, and I am going to try my best to make a nice set of screen prints for them of this poster.

When they are made, I will update it and show all you lovely people the prints I have made!

What's more scary than Halloween? The 90's

It's a fair point, there isn't much that can be recognised to be a scarier event, time or item than Halloween, but the era of the 90's is definitely even more terrifying.

I was asked by The Brickyard if I could design a poster for their horrendously beautiful idea of a 90's night as a Halloween special. I mean, what better way to celebrate the general acceptance of social fear, terribly made plastic crap and tiny tiny luminous dresses than the 90's.

The idea I had was to make the poster as horrendous as era it's self. So clearly it had to be bright, obnoxious and full of bad fonts.

Mind your eyes children.

  
I don't know what else to say about this, other than, my god, it's so fun to design ugly.