This month’s poster was inspired directly by one in particular – The Comedians.

I’d love to wax rhapsodic about my sentiment for this movie, my excellent taste in Graham Greene novels, or my admiration for the poster artist.  But the truth is I’ve never seen the movie (and would rather stare at this amazing poster art for 90 minutes than watch a movie, even with a stellar cast like this), I’ve never read the novel, and I am unable to find out who the artist was (meager research points to Mitchell Hooks maybe?).  But damn if that’s not a compelling poster.

We felt like the format fit this month’s Culprit Sessions well – the handlettering is nice and organic, as is the layout, and the thumbnail portraits fit the wish to include the DJs on the poster.  And many, many kudos to the photographers (at least one of them is Terrence Patrick, whose work I’ve been lucky enough to have access to before) who shot great press photos and made my life much easier.

First – the handlettering.  And kids – take it from me – do not try this at home.  Cut corners, use boring digitized typefaces, and never try to hand draw your own letters.  It takes forever!  Always take the easy way out.  Do as I say, not as I do.

I started with a carpenter’s pencil on newsprint to go for a really rough, scratchy edge.  It made for a nice way to inform my hand how to jaggedly block out the letters, but the edge was too fuzzy.  So I gave it another go with a Micron pen on Graphis 360 layout paper, and that produced a better result. You’ll note that I built alphabets instead of just writing out the artists names and other words.  It looked to me like that’s how the artist that made the Comedians poster made theirs, possibly by cutting out brushed on paper letters.  So I made mine piecemeal in kind.

Then treating the photos.  Much easier.

Then throw everything together.

Climbers are some up and comers from Mexicali, so that’s where we went with the artwork.  Signs, signs, and more signs.  I had a lot of fun making this one.

Culprit’s monthly rooftop party at the Standard, Downtown LA is back again.  This year is going to have some heavy, heavy talent.  If you’re in LA, I highly recommend checking it out.
(If you’re in Chicago, check me out on the #36 Broadway bus.  I’ll be all the way in the back with the creepers!)

So where will you be April 6th?

But I was not expecting to be charged with creating artwork for a dance music EP so replete with narrative and sentiment as when commissioned by the good people of the Culprit label to make the artist jozif’s newest release.  The Lady B EP’s songs are hard to describe, even within the framework of today’s widely varied electronic musicscape.  But more than anything, they remind me of early 90′s dance music, when bands who had previously made rich, thoughtful, heartfelt music finally felt ok with forgoing the stigma of making songs without traditional, analog instruments and began to experiment with drum machines and synthesizers, but might have also included a few analog sounds for good measure.  Skip my clunky description and click here to have a listen for yourself.

jozif was good enough to provide me with some direction in making the artwork.  The songs were an ode to his girl – Lady B – who he had completely fallen for.  He wanted imagery that conveyed the idea of growing from something incredibly small and delicate into a strong and long lasting ‘object’.  Specifically, an acorn and an oak tree.

My initial ideas were a bit too obtuse – I was intent on using female figures, one inside the other, but it just didn’t work.  After many iterations, we went with something a lot more straightforward.  Sometimes it’s not a bad idea to make full use of the beauty provided by nature present it with fewer alterations.  I tend to shy away from symbolism, which is why I think I went more for the human form, but for songs with such rich narrative value, it made sense to give the viewer/listener the images with which they should rightly be working.

A kind woman whose Flickr handle is Ray Gun Betty sent me an email a couple weeks ago with her discovery of Machi Abe’s woodcut illustrations for Kobo Abe’s novel “Inter Ice Age 4″.  She is scanning her grandfather’s science fiction book collection for posterity’s sake, and happened to stumble upon my Woman In The Dunes post.  I’m still trying to decide if I’m more astounded by Machi’s illustrations or the randomness of having them presented to me a year and a half after my curiosity was piqued for them (forgive me – I grew up in a pre-internet age).

I was previously unfamiliar with the novel “Inter Ice Age 4″, but it is now on my must-read list.  Here are the incredible images:

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Thanks to Ray Gun Betty!

I was pretty keen on them, but Andrei – the man who runs the Culprit label, and my most visually savvy client to date – wasn’t feeling them.  Dyed Soundorom is his favorite DJ and producer, and quite possibly one of the cooler looking dudes in electronic music.  Andrei really wanted to draw from the look of old jazz photos, so we rebooted and came up with a higher contrast, 30% more sexified look.  Can I get some finger snaps?