Mean Everything to Artwork

The Fine fellas in Manchester Orchestra played Late Show with David Letterman last night and they killed it. And Dave held up my artwork. Pretty good night.

Busy week | tooting of thine own horn

This week was crazy. Both Leah and I are beyond slammed with work and to boot, we are trying to paint, fix-up and move into our new house.  Also this week was a big one for a recent project of mine that I am extremely proud of.  This week was the release of Manchester Orchestra’s new CD/LP “Mean Everything To Nothing” which I did the design/layout and some of the photos for.  Back in January  I got a call from my friend Jeremiah (drummer) with this idea in his head for the new Manchester record. He wanted to use old Polaroid pull apart film to do transfers and the transfers would make up the artwork of the record.  I was initially hired on to just help him do the transfers and photos, but as things went along, I ended up getting the job to do the full layout.

 Jeremiah and I spent many days doing all sorts of crazy things with 12 packs of Polaroid 669 film. For a while we tried EMULSION LIFTS which are cool, but a pain in the butt. (it pretty much involves boiling the photo and the image separates itself from the paper on a thin piece of gelatin.) Finally, one day, while trying to find the ‘perfect’ cover image, I found a transfer we did and put in the TRASH pile. some of the chemicals bonded to the paper and pulled up when you pull back the Polaroid.  Somehow at 2nd glance, I knew this would be the cover. Did some clever editing… and BOOM. The cover was born.

Somehow along the way I decided, that since we’re doing a very manual process for the images, why not make everything else I do with the layout HARDER. I purchased some old wooden letterpress Typefaces and blocks and set all the cover, track listing and numbers by hand with these old letters. I also made the lyric layouts harder than they should be too. Needless to say, it was a very time consuming project, but after I saw the finished product, I knew it was time well spent. When I saw the CD I was extremely happy. When I saw the LP this past weekend…. I had a smile on my face I couldn’t wipe off.  

Next Wednesday Night  Manchester Orchestra will be on Letterman and Dave will be holding up the LP; my artwork. That’ll be a awesome moment for me. 

Oh… also too, the record is really really really good. I wasn’t the world’s biggest fan of their last record, but this new one is absolutely fantastic. I expect great things from it. Do yourself a favor and check it out, if not buy it for the artwork. 

 

Bought a house!

We bought a house. too crazy right now to write about, but now you know.

iPhone photo story telling

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then posting these should save me some time.

 

Leah and Cap'n Manley at the rotating restaurant atop of the Westin Hotel Atlanta

 

view from the Westin Hotel's restaurant. See that tall builiding in the middle that has the big "W" on it? That's Leah's hotel.

I've finally come arround to enjoying eating at Sushi places. This is from the dudes bathroom at RuSans in ATL

 

Brutus doesn't know what to do with himself when it rains outside. He puts this thing in his mouth and just stares out the window

Leah and I helped out with a photo gallery showing of kids we, along with some friends, help teach photography to.

when Brutus tries to nap at night, he really spreads out and lets it all hang out

 

The Damion Suomi record came out last month and I did the layout/design. The pride of the project, the LP

 

Last weekend we snuck away to Charlotte,NC to hang out with my parents so my dad and I could go to the Lowes Motor Speedway and check out a car show

a sweet Ed "big daddy" Roth hot rod. I want this.

 

Brutus fell asleep on my lap last night with his snaggle-tooth showing. This is the stuff that makes my day