Openmind designs
Items created by by design alter-ego, Openmind
This has been in the pipeline a while, I think I did the design last autumn but had been collecting the contents for longer. Chalk Brighton, the brainchild of old friends Dean Ricca-Smith and Simon Skevington, is a new company specialising in limited edition T-shirt prints with a difference. One of their debut designs spelt out SOUL in bold letters entirely made up of titles of their favourite soul records and was a big hit. They plan to continue the series and I submitted my entry in the form of Moog. Not an obvious follow up but Chalk isn’t an obvious kind of company.
The tracks within my design either refer to records with Moog in the title or famous songs which feature the Moog somewhere in the kit list (did you know that the bassline to Donna Summer‘s ‘I Feel Love’ was played on a Moog?). Anyway, the shirt is big on design but minimal of contrast so it blends together nicely when printed and is actually a lot more subtle than these photos suggest. Also you have to love the attention to detail with the names on the neck tag 
Get them while they’re hot…
a bit of work I did this weekend… and the follow up
click for larger versions
So, my new EP – The Shape Of Things That Hum – should finally be in shops today (Jan 11th) after a pressing plant mistake led to the whole lot being repressed, missing the Dec 14th release date.
You’ll find a poster wrapped around the vinyl and inside is another of Henry Flint’s amazing illustrations – done specially for this release. He only provides the line work though and I colour each image in Photoshop using a combination of photos, transparency and colour balancing.
It’s a painstaking process involving many layers, minute mouse work and multiple options and variations. I did several screen shots of the work in progress as I went this time (see below) and I’d estimate it took roughly 2 weeks of intense work.
It wasn’t helped by Photoshop bugs flattening the image for no reason after saving a session. I’d wake up the next morning to find a whole session had been lost and I had to use Time Machine to go back a stage to un-flatten the thing.
Another setback was ‘the orange juice incident‘ after a weeks work on it in the evenings on holiday. That seems an age away now and I’m at work on the final installment, due out around May. Not sure what the cover to that will be but I have plenty more of Henry’s work available to use and then there’s the album cover…
There will be a Shape Of Things Reader mix up on Soundcloud later this week featuring music from the EP plus influential tracks I was listening to whilst making it and other favourites from 2009.
Well, it’s part 2 of the trilogy that hits the web today – not the streets as projected because of a manufacturing cock up that saw the 12″ run pressed on lightweight vinyl. The physical format will now be available in shops from Jan 11th 2010. But, for those that can’t wait there is a place to order it and it should arrive before Xmas if you hurry – the Ninja shop has copies and will be open until Friday the 19th.
For a fiver you get a 5 track 12″ housed in a full colour inner sleeve, wrapped in an A2 double-sided poster cover, all held together by a snugly fitting plastic sleeve. Not only that, you get a code that lets you download all 5 tracks PLUS 3 remixes by Mr P (aka ex-Fooder PC) of ‘All Covered In Darkness’ – not a bad deal by any means. Alternatively, if you only do the digital thing then the 8 track package is available from all good download stores from today.
Lots going on this week; as well as the 12″, last week’s ‘Now, Look & Listen’ AV mix with DK there’s the first part of my Warp mix – Blech 20.1 dropping on Tuesday, a mixed guide to the new EP’s contents and a second Warp mix that are both nearly finished. I also have a very special post scheduled about one of the artists I sampled on the new record. You wait for ages and then 6 come along at once…
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Capsule is a new venture from Rob Lynam – the man who bought you online design magazine Multilink. It comes in the form of a slim A5 perfect bound volume packed with some of the finest illustrators around. Artists like France’s Duster, the UK’s Doug Bowden (aka Pandayoghurt) and my good self all have space to showcase designs past and present in full colour.
Rob plans to do prints of some of the selections at some point and if you want to sample the kind of exquisite taste he has then take a look through the free online magazines on his Multilink site.
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Got this last week, hard to take a photo but it’s spot varnish on black again, highlighting Henry Flint‘s line work
Adding to the post below and, on the eve of Dylan ‘King Cannibal’ Richards‘ first full length release:
Both Dylan and I were pretty gutted when Ninja said they weren’t going to do a last 12″ single from the album (not a physical one anyway) as we wouldn’t see the cover image any bigger than CD sized. All that effort and work, lost on a format little bigger than a coaster! I’ve taken the step to have them available as a series of desktops and a high quality jpeg of the cover, twice the size of an LP sleeve, at a resolution that you could make a poster from on the Downloads page.
Let The Night Roar is out now on Ninja Tune
Various King Cannibal desktop wallpapers in progress. There’ll be a big post about the artwork soon as the album drops on Monday and hopefully a big pdf file of the cover will be available to you all so that you’ll be able to see it in all it’s pervy, fetishistic glory.
Here’s the front cover for the next DJ Food EP – ‘The Shape Of Things That Hum’ – released Nov 30th. The 12″ sleeve will again be a poster cover featuring work by the ever brilliant Henry Flint (currently drawing Shakara in 2000ad) with colours by yours truly. Here’s a little bit of the back cover too.
This will be the next DJ Food EP in the trilogy, released Dec 7th as a 12″ with poster cover and download with 3 bonus remixes.
Side A
1. Sentinel (Shadow Guard) – DJ Food & DK, mixed by King Cannibal
2. extract from Stolen Moments too – variations on a theme
3. Brother John – featuring the voice of John Rydgren, a tribute of sorts
Side B
1. GIANT (instrumental) This is a cover of the The The classic, there will be a vocal version on the album next year by Matt Johnson himself
2. Sentinel (Lunar Defence) – a reprise / reversion of the main track
8 track Download + pdf booklet
All Covered In Darkness (Mr P remix suite) 3 remixes by PC totalling 13 minutes.
Artwork is again by Henry Flint on the inks and me on the colours, here’s the main cover / poster image.
getting there…
I have a piece in this exhibition, hosted by Blueprint Magazine. They will be making pads of each design to be scattered throughout the show so that people can tear off their favourites and take a copy home. The piece came out of a trip to the Guggenheim in Bilbao 10 years ago, you can see it and others here
New EP art for the promo CD up on my Flickr
This is more of a teaser picture for the final cover which is in full colour and will reveal more than twice as much again of the image. The 12″ comes wrapped in a poster cover…
Kev
Yes, I know, I can’t quite believe I’m typing that either.
Yesterday it was issue 3 of Alan Moore‘s ‘Big Numbers’ and today news of a new DJ Food record, whatever next?
Today I cut the first of three 12″ EPs which will make up the bulk of an album early next year, the first one is called ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’ and is out late May/early June on vinyl and download.
The vinyl will have 5 tracks with a playing time of just over 30 minutes and the download package will have a remix by Bundy K Brown that won’t be available on the vinyl or album when it drops. There will possibly also be an extra instrumental and a cappella of one of the tracks too + a digital booklet to go with it.
More details soon but here’s a sneak peek at part of the artwork, done by one of my favourite comic artists, Henry Flint.