Dream 3

Now in it's 5th year, the global phenomenon that is Secret 7 returned to showcase 700 unique record sleeves and raise a whole bunch of money for Amnesty International UK.

This year things were arranged a little differently with a month long exhibition taking place at Sonos Studio in Shoreditch to whet the appetites of the vinyl-crazed public ahead of the sale, which took place on Monday 2nd May 2016.

As ever there was a cool mix of bands and artists assembled by Kevin King (thanks for having me back) to choose from, including The Jam, Chvrches, Jack Garratt, Tame Impala, Etta James and John Lennon. The track that immediately stood out to me was the gorgeous 'Dream 3' by Max Richter; an artist I'd long admired and whose album 'The Blue Notebooks' is simply one of the most sublime records I've ever heard.

When it came to designing artwork for the piece of music taken from an 8 hour "sleep aid", I wanted to make sure I captured that dream-like quality and made something which resonated with the aesthetic of the existing album artwork.

I started with the idea of duplicating a moon image, which whilst creating a hypnotic effect much in the tradition of Richter's music, also conjured up ideas of dreams within dreams. It was all getting a bit too Inception-like but I thought the idea was strong enough to run with...

And so I ended up sketching the idea to give it an organic feel, hoping to reflect the nature of Richter's music. Although liking the outcome, to me it didn't evoke the mood or atmosphere of the track. This is something that needed to have depth and the sketch just felt too 1 dimensional.

To develop the idea of repeated patterns I decided to experiment with the concept of sleep as part of the cyclical nature of human existence and that we all have patterns that we replay - our daily routine. Of course we sleep, eat, work and play (if we're lucky) on a daily basis. This is echoed throughout the week, month, year, our entire lifespan and it was interesting to explore the idea that although this sounds repetitive and mundane, in fact it's the small joys we bring to ourselves on a daily basis which gives our lives variety and meaning, and that is something to be celebrated!

In an attempt to capture that idea (and in keeping with the minimalist nature of the music) I set about painting ink onto a rotating piece of paper, which I prepared on my turntable. There were many attempts (as the above image shows - plus many more were discarded) before I found the perfect representation of my concept.

The image was mounted on an inked gradient and then mounted on the blank record sleeve.

So there you have it! A little bit of an insight into the thought process and execution behind my creation and a bit of fanboy gushing for Max - which seriously, if you haven't heard 'The Blue Notebooks', then go do that right now! Oh, and if you brought my contribution to this fantastic cause, then thank you. I hope you like it.

Age of Reason

On 19th April 2014 the needle was dropped into the groove of internationally celebrated Record Store Day for another dose of limited edition vinyl and musical merriment!

Again I was asked by the impassioned overlord of Secret 7 Mr. Kevin King to contribute a one-off record sleeve to be sold on the big day.

The charity this year was War Child and an almighty £41,500 was raised for the cause. This was great news and it brought the total Secret 7 contribution to over £105,000.

I chose to illustrate 'Age of Reason' (track above) for Brummy metal newcomers Black Sabbath and went down a more graphic-vector route, hoping to offer something different for the lads!

I also screen-printed the cover, to give it that va-va voom. Below is the final design and then the process.

Thank you to Kevin King for having me along for the journey again and on the off-chance that Ozzy, Tony or Geezer saw the artwork, I hope you liked it. Oh and if you were the person who bought it, thanks to you too.

Harder Than You Think

Remember that post where I designed a sleeve for Laura Marling's 'The Beast'?

Well, that alongside 699 other individually crafted record sleeves raised over £30,000 for the Art Against Knives charity! Here's a little video from the day.

As well as contributing a print for Laura Marling, I also designed a cover for another band involved with the project, Public Enemy. A band of whom I am very fond of, having seen them live in Nottingham when I was 18 years old.

Above is the front cover of the design, which was digitally printed for the exhibition.

Thanks again to Kevin for asking me to be a part of the show. It's always great to know that you can make a little difference to a big cause!

If you want to see all the other covers for the project, then visit the Secret 7 site, which I highly recommend that you do.

Black Flies

Back in February I was approached by a man named Kevin King, who had a project called Secret 7, which was linked to the annual event of Record Store Day and Teenage Cancer Trust.

The project was to feature 700 unique 7" record sleeves, interpreted by 700 artist's with an aim to 'rekindle some of the excitement for vinyl sleeve art in the digital era'. These were then to be exhibited at the Idea Generation Gallery in London and sold with 100% of the profits given to the TCT charity.

From the list of tracks available I picked 'Black Flies' by Ben Howard, whose debut album 'Every Kingdom' gets played quite a bit in my office.

Since the purpose of this project was create a one-off artwork, I decided to take a different approach to the design process. I selected various elements from previous designs I had created, not knowing if they would work together as a single composition. I did of course, resize them all to fit on a 7" sleeve, so I wasn't going in totally blind.

I decided to create an environment for the design, using screen-printing and here are the transparencies for the print.

A layer of light sensitive emulsion is applied to the screen and then the images are transferred to the screen using UV light. Here are all four layers of the print on one screen.

Here is the first colour, having been pulled through the screen.

The print on the sleeve - as you can see I've used masking tape to create a white frame around the print.

A close-up, showing that the sky is made up of halftone dots.

Printing the second colour.

A pink sun...

The third colour down, orange bricks.

Using the same orange, I printed the titles on the reverse of the sleeve.

Now here comes the tricky part. I wanted to create a 3D layered artwork, so I cut out a window frame shape from a piece of mount board. I then used my trusty Pentel pocket brush to illustrate a wood effect for the frame.

I then painted the window frame using a selection of acrylics, and never applying the paint too thick, so as to allow the illustrated wood effect to show through. I also printed a few flies onto acetate, which were affixed to the frame.

Here is a picture of the screen-printed sleeve, awaiting the frame to be put in place.

Here is the final cover, with the frame attached to the sleeve using double-sided tape.

A close up of the finished sleeve.

All in all, this was a fun project to work on; going into production of a final piece and not really knowing how it would turn out was a pretty daunting experience but I'm really happy with the results.

It was also fun to combine my love of screen-printing with a different, crafty approach. Hopefully the owner of the sleeve is enjoying it as much as I did putting it together.

You can buy the remaining sleeves from Teenage Cancer Trust's eBay page.

Of All The Times

A few new bits of work to show and tell.

First up, a poster for Ellen & the Escapades. It was nice to work for these lovely sounding folky dudes again, especially for a Record Store Day poster.

This will be available in strictly limited quantities at their RSD performance at Jumbo Records in Leeds, so if you want one I suggest you get out and support some local music in an awesome local record shop!

Next up a poster for some old chums of mine Her Name Is Calla and their show at one of Leeds' best kept secrets, Left Back Church.

I can totally imagine the band being suited to such a space; their soft whispered tones creeping through the stone arches before giving way to monoliths of noise rising up through the rafters. Lovely stuff...

Hopefully there'll be more new work to show and tell at the end of the week. It's obviously great getting to work on so many awesome projects but frustrating having to hold off on unveiling them to the public.

Maybe one of my new years resolutions should have been to be more patient...