Sunday 31 May 2009

Music Ramblings 1

I have 3 things in my life, design, music and food (there's a girlfriend in there somewhere). I can not live without out them, it's true. I am a complete hound for new tunes, or atleast new tunes to me (I've been on a blues bender recently, some of those guys have been dead for 30 years, so it's hardly "new" music, I digress), so I have decided to expand this blog into other random things that cross my path and I think are of some interest.

I was working on the layout change, (nice huh?) and my girlfriend shouted "Come down here now, there is an amazing band on Jools Holland!" I get down stairs to be greeted by a brass band. I have a bit of a soft spot for this new breed of hip hop/funk inspired brass bands (Youngblood Brass Band and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band are fine examples), they just blow my mind!

The brass band I am going to recommend now are:

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.



That is an awesome video!



The live videos are truly something special aswell.

These guys have some serious soul, end of.

Happy Listening.
Michael

Links
Hypnotic Brass Band
Youngblood Brass Band
Dirty Dozen Brass Band

Saturday 30 May 2009

DF Poster colab!

This is a rather exciting idea, I have covered the Design Forum poster design contest in a previous post, that poster however was done by me and just me. It was fun to do, and considering we were allowed to do more than one entry, I asked if any of the other members fancied collaborating with me.

Step forward Peter Barlows, we agreed I would handle the image, he would handle the text. Sorted. Well this is my part of it.

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I have only just sent it to Peter, so I will update this post when he gets back to me....

I'll leave the links the same.
Michael

Links
Larger Version
Badlans on IMDB
DF Comp
Peter Barlows on Twitter

Thursday 28 May 2009

CD Artwork

Well this is one of those jobs that I have and haven't enjoyed doing, mainly because the layout you will be able to see just below was actually one of my first drafts! And then there were 20 something or so drafts (you should have seen the deleted post!) with minor and major changes...basically if you hit the nail on the head the first time, how are you meant to feel?

Well regardless, this isn't actually finished, as this was meant to be a promo/sale ready CD printed with a card sleeve, and that is being skipped and due to something I don't remember right now, it is going into dual cases! So I will have to re-jigg it. Nothing major, the cover is done, that is the hard part!

But anyway I wanted to post this, as I feel it's done what I was asked to do and I like it. Now the goal posts have been moved slightly (not in bad way mind you) I will have to rethink and have more detail.

As it was meant to be...

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I'll throw some more links up when its done...
Michael

Links
Larger Version

Wednesday 20 May 2009

Poster

I am on a message board called Design Forums all the time, it is by far and away one of my favourite corners of the internet! Everyone on there is friendly and supportive, no matter what your skill level as a designer there are friendly people to offer advice and point you in directions should you need it.

Don't worry they have a fun cast of characters too, friendly mods, crazy teenagers, someone who is obsessed with emoticon, a grumpy old man and well, me...

But they are having a competiton to win the Wolverine Origins file. Having seen this in Borders and thought I want that! I decided to enter. The contest was set with the brief of Designing a poster for the (hypothetical) upcoming Quentin Tarantino re-make of "Badlands".

Now, I have been wanting to try and do something a bit like Frank Miller/Sin City style for ages, and this seemed like as good an opportunity as any. I have kinda based it on the original poster (i'll included an IMDB link to the film at the end) and kinda spun it a little.

I enjoyed making this.

Photobucket

It's late...
Michael

Links
Larger Version
Badlans on IMDB
DF Comp