Abbey Road - right here, right now!

As all my clients will know, I've been a bit busy this last couple of months. It's mainly down to the Abbey Road Live Here Now team, who have been keeping me on my toes with Mission Impossible style last minute jobs. Abbey Road Live Here Now records shows live and makes the CDs at the venue, so you can buy them after the gig. They are a great bunch, and they go way above and beyond the call of duty to get their releases out.

Each one tends to be a double CD, with a high quality digipack which is designed and printed in advance of the gig so the CDs can be written at the venue. They are usually ready to be bought five minutes after the show is over.

 

Damon Albarn and the Heavy Seas live at the Royal Albert Hall
The drawing was done by Damon's partner specially for the cover.

The Really Big Chorus performs Handel's Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall
I had pretty much a free reign for this one, so I did an illustration for the cover. There are two versions: the adult and youth choruses.

Nina Nesbitt live at Union Chapel
The brief was to follow the style of her website and incorporate fairy lights with her name as the front cover.

The Specials 2014 Tour Edition
The Specials have such a strong visual style it was a pleasure to make this one.

Steve Rothery live at Bush Hall

Status Quo live at Barclaycard Arena, Birmingham
This was made to fit into their existing artwork style, so it was more a case of creative layout than outright creativity.

Peter Hook & The Light live at Hebden Bridge
This bundle is three double CDs (one for each performance) plus the bonus disc featuring Rowetta. I had more of a free reign with this one, so used Hooky's logo as a basis for a typographic design.

You can buy all of these limited edition releases here: http://www.abbeyroad.com/live

New signwriting course!

My mate Joby Carter from Carters Steam Fair has just announced a new signwriting course in February - if you'd like to learn the craft from a master, now's yer chance!

I just made this image for him to promote it online.

Born Bitchin'

I made this logo last week for Anna Porter and Estelle Bilson-Booker's new clothing line, Born Bitchin' - good, clean 1970s fun!

Lucky Me!

 

I designed this poster reminiscent of a B movie poster for Strange Cargo for their "Lucky Me!" exhibition which went alongside their Triennial piece "The Luckiest Place on Earth" (see below)...

See a penny, pick it up...

Strange Cargo asked me to design a 'recycling device' for lucky pennies to be fixed under the bridge at Folkestone Central railway station as part of their "The Luckiest Place on Earth" art piece for Folkestone Triennial. Excitingly, it was to be 3d printed in titanium!

I had a choice of making it in plaster of Paris and then sending it to them to be scanned for printing, or getting it built up in CAD by a third party and doing it using the computer. Because of the repeating elements, I decided it would be better to do it using digital technology, and so I worked with another company to realise it in 3d.

It was a weird process. Apart from the 2d layout above, it was all in my head, and I was having to try and explain to someone else what shape it should be, and what measurements. So I decided the easiest thing to do would be to send them sketches of each component and we could discuss them as they were extruded on the computer...

 

It was a complicated process, but it worked! In the end, Renishaw printed the prototype and it looked not far off the original. Some things we'd changed because of tolerances of the material or the printing process.

 

 It's now installed at the Station and every time I pass it there are pennies in the holders, so people are clearly using it all the time! 

Birthday party

I did this silly invitation for me mate's 60th birthday, love a good doodle!

h Natural

 

I made this CD cover last week for h Natural (Steve Hogarth of Marillion), for his live at the 100 Club album with Abbey Road Studios. 

A little Christmas tipple

 

I've been working on some new labels for Kingswood Cider for their mead, cyser and braggert.

The Jim Jones Revue's Last Hurrah

The Jim Jones Revue asked me to design a T shirt for their last tour, The Last Hurrah. I have done a couple of others for them in the past, so it's nice to be involved in the last one... and it was great fun to do. Last minute, frantic, but a really good collaboration between me and the band while they were on the road resulted in this.

And then we used it as a basis to make the Live at The Forum double CD cover with Abbey Road:

Effie Butterworth

I recently made this website banner for Effie Butterworth who is making exquisite historically accurate and vintage inspired smalls! More from her to follow soon...

Ride the Ark in the Dark and other thrilling exploits

In between my other jobs I'm also always working for Carters Steam Fair, producing posters, leaflets and other stuff. Here are some of this year's bits and bobs...

 

 

 

 

Motorbikin'

 

Here's something else I did for The Black Douglas - I had to illustrate the potential model of the Sterling Autocycle (not built to this spec yet) to explore the option of using a Suzuki engine. I also had to design the wicker side car as a visualisation of what could be possible. Not an easy task, but a fun one!

Aaaaaeeeeeiiiiiiggggghhhhhh!!!!

It's Halloween again! Here's this year's poster and ticket I designed for The Chambers in Folkestone:

 

All work and no play... etc etc

It's been AGES since I posted anything on here, which is crazy really because I've been so busy I've been struggling to keep on top of everything so I really should have something to show for it! Here goes...

A poster for The Black Douglas to advertise their Sterling Autocycle (see above)... along with a logo (see below) using lettering I specially made for the project.

 

I also designed this little logo for them which I don't think is being used but I quite like it:

 

Plus some various T shirt designs...