http://www.myspace.com/kahoots / http://www.myspace.com/ninaviolet

I’ve taken on duties for some online promotion and poster design for Che’s Lounge, (redesign for their site is in the works) so this is my first poster. Hopefully many more to come:

Come to the show on saturday, and follow @cheslounge on twitter for up to the minute updates!

I came up with this while I was driving today, I wanted to create a shirt design that used the new WVVY logo but was not exclusively the logo. I’d been thinking about ideas, and then the LCD Soundsystem song “Us V Them” came on with the line “Us V Them Over and Over again” and I just envisioned this group of small people staring up at a giant glom of antennas, intimidated but empowered to press on and attempt to let their voices be heard amongst the din of noise that clogs the airwaves.

So this is what I created, from that idea:

(click for larger)

And the back would be like this:

and here’s the mockup of the shirt:

The logo could also very well be used, I suppose, in the context of any low power radio promo, but it was designed specifically to fit the theme of WVVY

As I am (usually) a man of my word, I followed through with the design I’d been floating in my head. Overall it came out about how I wanted it to:

(click for a larger version)

If you like, you can also download the PDF in 300 dpi at 8.5 x 11 for printing.

I’m going to see how it looks on paper tomorrow, I hope it looks okay at 8.5 x 11, otherwise I might scale it to 11 x 17 (fortunately since it’s all font work, it’s easily scalable).

The design was inspired by a combination of elements. First: Chris, another DJ, has a flier for his show with a huge list of bands he plays on it, and I had always seen it and thought “I should display that kind of information somehow!” Second: there was a recent collection of grammy awards artwork that created portraits of band members with the song titles of some of the music that influenced them. It was neat, but the colors were fruity and it used a bunch of ugly fonts that just didn’t do it for me. I took the concept and did a “portrait” of my existing logo made entirely of band names. When all was said and done, it lacked a tiny bit of cohesion without the original tracing image behind it, so i lowered the opacity way down, blurred it out a bit, and left it in the background, for the trace of the original logo, to keep it more easily recognizable.

The general rule was that my favorite bands got larger billing, but in the end that occasionally went out the window, as I found myself remembering certain bands way after the fact and putting them in as an afterthought, not really wanting to rearrange the entire composition to fit them in. Still, most of the bands I like are here, although I overlooked a massive portion of my collection. Oh yeah, and I don’t think I repeated any names, I challenge you to find any (or a typo: hint – “zeigeist” is not a typo).

One more fun fact: there are 240 artists in the image. Those were hand selected (and hand typed, phew) from over 1300 or so artists in my collection.

I’ll probably find out tomorrow that there’s some kind of program that could’ve automated this process for me. Anyway… yay for wanking off on a sunday!

Minor changes may yet be made but I’m pretty satisfied, it shows up well at a distance, too.

(Click image for bigger version)

I figured the catch phrase could be something like “If only we had this many antennas, then maybe you could hear us!” or is that self defeating?

On that subject: my fill in from Chris’ show this week will be available soon, and a snippet of Wolfie’s show yesterday. Damn recording software bugged out on me so I was only able to get the last quarter of his show, sorry Wolfie.

If you live in New England, and perhaps elsewhere, I haven’t tracked their proliferation, you may be aware of a franchise restaurant chain called “Friendly’s” I guess it’s pluralized because someone named Friendly owns it? Regardless, it’s your standard American fare: Burgers, Ice cream, old people, young children and middle aged rampantly obese people. As a child, I loved friendly’s, I wanted to go there every time I went “off island” and I constantly jonesed for their burgers and reese’s peanut butter cup sundaes. In my adult life I’ve tried to resist it, but occasionally the nostalgic urge comes over me and I make the stop, devouring a nice big ball of greasy food and saccharine sweetness. Yesterday on the way to Umass for my brother’s graduation, my mother and I stopped in at one to grab a bite on the road. After using the restroom, I stepped out into the hallway and was met with a horrific site, pictured below:

How would people get to work? What monstrosity is this? As a child I had fantasized about the book “cloudy with a chance of meatballs” coming true but this was a nightmare in front of my eyes. Upon looking more closely around the restaurant, several such horrors were present: churches with ice cream cones towering behind them, A town hall dwarfed by a grilled cheese sandwich. Good god, it was terrifying. Imagine your town, crushed by several pounds of meat and dairy, all cooked in lard. These poor people. I had to save them. I sprinted out the door to the nearest Walmart and gathered up supplies: Mr. Clean, a mop, and as many trash bags as I could carry. I sprinted toward the bridge waving the mop blindly in front of my face, like an amateur jouster, afraid to be hit and knocked from my horse. I swatted at the burger wildly with the wet end of the mop, trying to ignore the screams and whines of the bacon as the grease cutter sliced through it. The bun knocked me over a few times, but after an epic battle, the burger collapsed to the ground, defeated in a puddle of it’s own juices and melted cheese. I begrudgingly collected up the remains of the hideous beast, grease ruining my clothing, and dumped it into the trash bag.

Triumphant, I carried on. I stopped at a salon and borrowed 2 blow dryers that I then wielded like 6 shooters as I approached the ice cream cone. It attempted to drip into my mouth, but I resisted it’s temptations and fired upon it with impunity until it was nothing but a pink sticky mess on the pavement behind the town hall. Just then I heard a distant rumbling and a few moments later, the hill to the north was shadowed by onion rings, rolling downward toward me. I knew I was outmatched. As they crushed cars and knocked fire hydrants out of the sidewalk, sending jetstreams of water into the air. I retreated, meeting once again with my mother and shouting at her to start the car, drive, drive, before we’re all killed! We drove up the next hill and the onion rings lost momentum, collapsing upon themselves in greasy breaded messes. On the horizon I could see the french fries bursting from the pavement like fast growing trees, then crawling down the street as if they were caterpillars, eating the greenery as they went. These poor people. I did my best to save them, but I was overwhelmed, the food was too much, too prolific, too delicious and fattening. This poor town, off an exit in western Massachusetts, would have to fight this behemoth on their own. Good luck, brave souls.

And now, I’m off to watch my brother graduate.

I added a couple quick photoshops that I created for my friend Matt a while back to the art section (one of them was already there, but I decided to throw the supplement in alongside it). These were for a film audition that never became an actual film, but we had some fun shooting in Richard Lee’s house anyway. It was intended to be about questioning sanity, and I played an insane person.

I really got into the role and the lines between fun and reality became crossed and confused, most of the action was improvised on the spot with very little rehearsal and until “cut” was shouted I found myself wondering if everyone had really gone off the deep end. I also had a scene in which I was thrown out of a moving car. It was shot 3 times and I got my leg caught in a cable. Matt, if you read this, I’d love the raw footage some time, if any of it is still sitting around somewhere. Actually, it might be too horrifying to watch.

I designed these images to be as sexy as possible for the purpose of drawing people to the bodies, then placing the rats on the head, a bit like the Windowlicker artwork, it becomes disturbing if looked at for more than a quick glance.

It’s still a work in progress, and I need to tweak some visual elements, add more images, categories, and various other details, but thanks to the glory of WordPress and the wonderful NextGen gallery plugin created by Alex Rabe I’ve easily integrated a gallery into the art section. Go check it out.

Also found on noquedanblogs – there is a lot of neat looking stuff over there.