Knife Heart Maze

This is part of a rock and roll maze thing I'm doing for the Murder Bros. It will be awesome. There will be a CD in it, and we'll sell them at shows.
If you want, you can print this one out here, and try it. If you have fun, let me know.

Murder Bros., Hey Girl, and Astronomers

I made this photoshop disaster for the Murder Bros. show with Hey Girl and Astronomers. I like the way it turned out because I was really going for that obviously photoshopped look. I thought "tiger" because a lot of people think that tigers live in Africa (Disney's Jungle Book at fault?). I thought "Brazilian super model" because a lot of people think the Nile is in South America, and i figured if Brazil was in Africa, it would be where Egypt and Ethiopia are on that continent. I thought giant nebula back ground because a lot of people like Astronomers.

I guess I over-thought this. But, I love the way it came out, and a lot of people complimented me on it. I think that that's the most rewarding thing about designing things like this. It's not about people "getting" what your process was, but just going "NOICE" when you hand it to them. The guy at the door at the Blue Nile loved it, and someone meticulously drew tattoos on Alessandra (the woman pictured) on one of the flyers taped to the door. It looked awesome. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't turn out. I love when people take work I've done that's been hung up and start drawing on it or adding to it. It's happened a bunch of times, and I'm always glad someone bothered to go to the trouble.

I do want to point out how incredible my background isolation is, by the way. It's one of the holy grails of a good designer or at least photoshopper, but no one outside of the design community ever comments on it. And you only really get to talk about it when someone blows it. For people not paying attention, the catalog perusers of America, the painstaking work that goes into background deletion or alteration goes unnoticed.  So when you look at the .psd above, I want you to look at how that background looks like it belongs there it doesn't look like I grabbed another image from somewhere and duplicated her a couple times, did a quick mask, and blurred edges, and used various layer blending options to make it all look like it belongs.

The tiger head on the other hand, was a joke, and was meant to look a little cut and pastey. . . but there's actually an art to that, too. I did adjust the light source a bit to look like the light on the tiger was the same light that was on the girl's body.

I hope you count yourself, dear reader, as one of the people who enjoy this flyer.

The Murder Bros. and the Courting Harlots

The Murder Bros. are continuing their Murder Bros. and friends shows this weekend. This Saturday, we're appearing with the Courting Harlots. Very awesome.
The above photo was pilfered online. I do a lot of photo downloads when I see something for my morgue. I dug it up and love that it's simultaneously formal, violent, sexy, and artistic. The alteration and of the photo and the composition took a little work, but I like the way it turned out, and it looks deceptively simple.

This is the poster of the first Murder Bros. & Friends show. It was with Wasted Year and Pete Stallings. They are all great musicians. I got this picture from the Men's Fashion Illustrations from the Turn of the Century. It's by Kno. J. Mitchell Co. I messed with the scan a ton. And the poster had the other acts' names at the bottom of the page. I will use one more drawing from this book before I return it to the library. I trawl the library a lot for images to either inspire me or to steal. I love Old Glory in the background of this one. I like that they look like they're all carrying weapons, but look very dapper doing it. There's a story in this image that makes my imagination run a bit wild.

Murder Bros. in Concert with the Judy Chops on December 25

For many reasons, I've been on a hand-drawn kick lately. I really enjoy the inherent messiness of doing it this way—especially when it's your goal to be punk rock! There's a rush like trapeze without a net when you're working like this. I use no erasures at all. I didn't even have an eraser near me. I used no measurement or drawing aids of any kind. I desired a young feel that seems edgy and unrefined, but I want there to be a classy component, so I drew a picture of a classy lady. I wanted the text to be grungy but legible. I especially love how the logo works hand-drawn.

I enjoy the way it came out, but I think I might do an illustrator poster next time round. People aren't as impressed by illustrator work, but they should be. Drawing by hand is as easy as murder.

Meantime, my band the Murder Bros. is really taking off and doing quite well. We recorded a demo, and we're playing lots of shows with great acts from the area. Keep an eye out.

Intentional Disaster

The Murder Bros. is having their first gig in Harrisonburg this weekend, so I've designed a punk rock fly-poster. I'm a big fan of Jay Ryan's design work and his ideas about the destruction of text. I wanted it to be off-center and bent and make the copy simultaneously difficult and compelling to read. I thought working in hand would accomplish this best. In fact, it's almost always contrived-looking to do this digitally. Maybe it is by hand, too.

Anyway, it's difficult to make something ugly on purpose, but I'm a form follows function kind of guy, and I thought that we needed a fly-poster that looked punk. The skull in the middle is modeled after a turkey skull I found online, and I put intentional "mistakes" in there, too. I hope not to have gone overboard, but I had a great time making this thing, and that's mostly what it was for. . . and to promote the gig and the band of course. With any luck, you'll think I did both with this design.

Fill the Void Try

I've always thought Bau Haus was a bit metal. In a lot of ways, the sentiment is similar. . . at least to me. So, when my friend's band put on a logo contest, I designed this. I think the key to logos for bands is to keep it as simple as possible so that it's immediately recognizable and easy to put on picks, tees, guitars, drum heads, and anything else you can think of in an any color you can think of. Plus, if you design clean, you can dirty it up in process or digitally. I've designed grungy stuff, and it always looks disappointing. It's a lot easier to dirty something after designing it than it is to clean something up. My advice is to design super clean and start your conversation with a client about the level of noise they'd like in the piece. Some clients think that your first draft is the last one, but this logo above can be changed in every way fairly easily.

Also, grunge is so 1992. Grunge graphics and typography looks incredibly dated to me. I think a great deal about typography, and sometimes I just build my own text the hard way. I didn't here, but I did for my own band, and I would for a corporate logo that needed to be clean or for someone who just wanted some thrashier copy. For a long title, I think manipulation of a black typeface works fine. I have strong feelings about altering someone else's font in a way that's too obvious to not burn your eyeballs, so I hope my alterations aren't noticeable in this poplar.

There are some subtle alignment things in this that I like very much.

Murder Bros. Logo

I wanted a very simple logo for my band, the Murder Bros., that would work in any color and would work on tshirts and CD's. It had to look good at any size. I really love starting off projects like this, making them extremely complicated, and then simplifying them so that they end up looking effortless. It's easier to pare down than to build up.