We're gonna stomp all the way to the moon!

Carlisle are you ready!

Over the past week or so I'm been working on the poster for the up-and-coming Ska night, which is the invention of The Brickyard's new kid Nick. He asked me if I could come up with a poster, and instantly my head clicked – every single Ska poster I have ever seen was this horrible scanned, monotone poster laden with checker-board.

I started with a few ideas of making it really rough, and making look like it had been through the wrong end of a photocopier a few too many times.

I sent a few tests through, and we both realised that it may of been a bit too rough to actually get the message across correctly. So from there I moved on to the idea of mixing up the fonts with imagery and all the while keeping the harsh monochrome.

I tried and tried and I just couldn't make the monochrome stand out, it just looked plain and nothing different from what already existed – but also it wasn't quite traditional enough to reinforce the idea of the old posters of yonder.

Get yourselves there, It'll pretty bloody good!

There's a snake in ma' boot!

Although the title may suggest there is a snake in Boot – I am afraid to inform you that is incorrect, there will now be Rattlesnakes in another Cumbria town.

No, I regret to announce that the small town of Boot does not house any snakes, though Carlisle will play host to the ever more popular Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes instead. This rock / reptile exhibition is one not to be missed! A perfect idea for a family day out!

Frank Carter is at The Brickyard on the 5th of June, with his collection of rattlesnakes and his colourful body additions, known on the streets as 'tattoos'. Although he may look scary; we can report that he will be doing Christian cover versions of Three Blind Mice, Twinkle Twinkle, Cotton-Eye Joe and many more party favourites.

If you look at the poster, you'll see I included many pretty images on the next of the man. These include birds, snakes, flies and pigs – this is because Frank is very close to nature and all of it's precious animals. Frank's previous job was working for a mediaeval artefact preservation society called Gallows; this brought him in contact with various types of yarn and wood of the past which fuelled his passion for the beauty of nature and animals thus helping form this spectacular touring reptile show.

So get you children and your parents, this fun event will be an evening of excitement and wonder for all ages. Tickets are £11 in advance, and with this you'll have access to all the fun and games—pass the parcel, pin the tail on the metal head and a game of 'speed bingo' for you adventurous types.

Vincent Walden's not-so-professional reviews: The Jazz Night @ The Bessie Boyd

I made a playlist of the tracks I could find from last night, so I recommend that you pop this on while you read this.
https://open.spotify.com/user/vincentiooo/playlist/62AN864IS6EloT0pVOAiVt

So if you are playing that playlist, it is a bit short because I couldn't find some tracks, couldn't remember some and just didn't hear the name of some. What you hear on the playlist will give you a flavour of what was played last night, but really because it was mostly a pianist and a trumpeter, these tracks had their own style on them and won't sound too much like the original.

So last night I attended the very first Jazz Night @ The Bessie Boyd, Carlisle and it was flippin' lovely! Hosted by Paul Edis and Graham Hardy, two jazz musicians who trekked over from the foreign exotic land of Newcastle to play us a fantastic gig.

Last night was brilliant; the sound was mastered very, very well—the musicians were on point and all the tracks seemed to seamlessly blur into one another making a strange gradient of musical loveliness. If it wasn't enough that these two gentlemen were putting on great gig so far, they then introduced and invited their friend onto the stage to join them playing Alto Sax on the world famous 'Work Song', also including a brilliant jam session at the end.

If you look at the playlist I slightly mashed together, you'll see artists such as Miles David, Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Clark Terry and Louis Armstrong; all of which were played to a superb level and done well beyond justice.

I spent the evening slightly slumped in a chair sipping away at Bombay Sapphire, nibbling on home-made pulled pork sandwiches and being carried away on a river of soft B Minors. I would give the evening a full 10/10 but I'm afraid it has to have a 9.5/10 instead and this is not due to the band, nor the venue. This is due to the overly-enthusiastic man of whom sat in front of me and constantly tapped his old, worn fingernails on the 12" LP placemat in some horrid, out of tune and annoyingly loud fashion. If this gentleman was trying to fill the space of the drummer, it was like giving Keith Moon a Jazz band, 26 larger shandies and knocking all his rhythm out of him—it was annoying, in no sense of timing and horribly distracting okay.

But besides all that—Brilliant performance guys, thank you very much.

Charlie also agrees.

What I'm working on: Easter Half Term Edition!

First up: A bit of a re-brand for a friends band.

My good friend Lewis approached me to ask if I could help him give his band a bit of a design re-brand; and of course he's a friend so I bit his hand off to be able to help. The band he operates in goes by the name of "Nightlife" which I can only assume that their experiences of nightlife expand future than the terrible clubs that Lancaster town holds and if famous for; so they surely would not of named themselves after the painful experience that I know to be 'Nightlife'.

Anyway, you don't need to read about me wining on, so here are the two front runners for the logo update –

You may notice they aren't written on normal surfaces; that is because I've lost my sketchbook.
Stay tuned, I'll like post the end result soon!

Secondly: A branding project in motion

I got the chance to do this branding through a friend of one of my tutors, and I've found it rather fun to do because of the great amount of freedom I have over the project. This may or may not be the final logo, but I still have a little way to go with the branding; but I am rather happy with this logo and I feel it'll work really well for the client.

Thirdly: A simple animation

I was asked by the lovely chaps at The Brickyard if I could do them a simple animation for one of their club nights; it was to animate a turntable for the Gaz 'n' Daz Vinyl Spintacular. You may see the lovely graphic of the turntable, but I did not create that – in fact the animation is made from the poster and the poster was done by the lovely and talented One Owl Please.

I just quickly knocked up the animation, but I do like it and I feel the roughness and rubbishness of the animation adds to the style that the poster and the DJ's are aiming for, for the night.

Do I love you? (Indeed I do)

YES THE TITLE IS A NORTHERN SOUL TRACK AND THIS IS A POST ABOUT MOTOWN AND SOUL, WHAT OF IT?!?! YOU WANT SOME?!

So you may have seen that I've been doing the Motown posters for quite a while, and even recently I changed them up slightly – but as things normally do, I slightly feel out of love with my previous design. It's not that I didn't like the whole concept but I just kept looking at the poster and nor really looking at it the way I do with my other posters. So I had a little browse around and looked at some of my old posters and saw what I think was the issue—it was just too serious.

To me, Motown and Soul isn't all that serious music, it's a whole world away from Opera and was performed just to get you singing and dancing along with it, as it does for me; whether people appreciate my terrible dancing or not. So I made a note on my sketchbook that read "Needs to be more rough, playful and free" and for me, that was a really good thing to aim for since the designs I've made for the posters are rather rigid and stiff.

Another thing that changed is the background image. From day one Mark had informed me that he would like images of bands and performers of the Motown and Soul era to feature on the poster, but as he is leaving I feel his muse changed, he started spouting made things like "Why not have pictures of swinging legs, that'd look great" and "what about some older people dancing?" Poor man is off his head with freedom.

No, not really; it was a good idea and with a bit of tweaking, I think these little changes and the little drawings and shapes really help this poster cement itself not only into the branding I already created but also the design style that fits well with Motown and Soul posters.

Anyway, if you are still reading – this is one of the favourites that I had designed for the Motown and Soul Night, and I'll keep adding little things like I have with this one to honour the duly missed Mark Howllettnrdgnjsdiwqjnete.

The 90's rearing it's ugly head; again.

It's far more fun to design something ugly.

It really is; I mean it doesn't look very good, but god damn throwing paint at a wall is way more fun than painting a perfect skin tone. So once again the opportunity has come round to design a poster for the 90s night, and although they are awkward as sin, I do love them.

So I don't really know what to say about this, other than—if you can stand to actually look at this poster for a long period of time, I have failed you. From what I remember of my 6 years in the 90's, it was bright, ugly and full of optimism; which is everything I tried to capture in this poster sent from the throwbacks of The Rugrats and the hellish flashback of Saved By The Bell.
The colour palette for this was simple. Do the colours clash against each other like David Cameron and a council estate? Yes? SORTED!

So yeah, if you like your ears bleeding, eyes bleeding and the constant drifting sound of poorly arranged sickly sweet sounds—I'll see you there!