Finally.

The Enzian Cult Classic Movies poster series now has a home. The good friends and movie poster collaborators at Lure Design have made the posters available for sale at their webstore. If you missed snagging them at the theater, hop on over to Lure's site and pick them up NOW. While you're there, check out examples of their fine design work. It'll make you weep. Well, maybe not weep. But appreciators of fine design will certainly be impressed.

A little taste.

Been working on a big project. Not ready to show it yet but thought you deserved a peek.

The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here!

This week's Cult Classic Movie poster is for Steve Martin's last funny movie: The Jerk. Come on out to Enzian on June 9. Laugh a little, have a couple of drinks and BUY A POSTER.

I'd Buy That For Ten Dollars!

Here's the latest in the Enzian Cult Classic Movies poster series. Scary. Just like the movie — Robocop. This masterpiece is 18" x 24" and is printed in three colors — soulless black, arterial spray red and bulletproof metallic silver. This low numbered edition will sell fast. It'll be available at Enzian on Tuesday, May 24 during the showing.

My dog has fleas. And I have a new ukulele.

Yesterday, I just took possession of my very own HoneyBell Ukelele. These sweet little numbers are hand-crafted by Douglas Montgomery at the Guitar Factory in Orlando. Douglas and his partner Billy Fells have been building beautiful electric and acoustic guitars for years. Their Orange Blossom acoustic guitars have a meticulousness and classic styling reserved for only high-end musical instruments. It's that same attention to detail and high craftsmanship that makes the HoneyBell ukulele such a beautiful and desired object.

When they approached me about designing labels for the inside of the ukes I jumped at it! I knew they'd be lovely instruments and I had a few ideas about creating a distinctive personality for the line.

Conceptually, I immediately abandoned the all-too-easy connection to Hawaii and palm trees (even though there would have been some terrific imagery to work with). These are, after all, Florida Ukuleles, mostly made with indigenous Florida woods. My first design attempts on the project utilized 50s Florida motel signage styles in an effort to evoke the nostalgic feeling of a road trip vacation to the Sunshine State. Even though there were a couple of designs that were okay, I wasn't satisfied that they told the real story about HoneyBell Ukes.

The things that impressed me most about these instruments are the design and craftsmanship. Telling that story seemed important but, after all, these are UKULELES. They are fun to play and to listen to. A funeral dirge would sound fun on a ukulele. How could I say all at once: this is a masterfully crafted musical instrument but, boy, I'd sure like to play Space Oddity on it?

Victorian small space ads. That's how. I could use lofty eloquent language like they used in the old turn-of-the-century (turn of the last century) to make outrageous claims about the instruments and juxtapose that with ironic and nonsensical engravings swiped from Victorian clip art. I created a mythical history for the brand with a mythical founder and factory. The labels had too much copy and the art was too small to be seen easily without a magnifying glass – especially through the tiny soundhole. Sure these are objets d'art, but don't take them too seriously.

This best part of this for me was that Doug and Billy (other Billy) liked it. They believed in a pretty kooky design idea.

Pictured: Ukulele labels, Douglas Montgomery – instrument builder unparalleled, my uke.

Bueller? Bueller?

Orlando's art and repertory cinema, Enzian Theater (or is it theatre?), has started a series of limited, hand-silkscreened posters to celebrate its Cult Classic Movie Series. My contribution, so far, is the first poster -- Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The three color 18"x24" poster is on a heavy white stock and is very limited to a signed and numbered edition of twenty-eight. It will be on sell at the theater the night of film (May 12 @ 9:30 pm).

UPDATE: We had a really good sell at Enzian. This Saturday night at midnight, there will be an encore presentation of Ferris Bueller's Day Out. We'll be there with the remainder of the edition. A sell-out would nice for the inaugural poster!

Time to clean out the cellphone

Cellphone is getting a little too heavy. Time to purge. Here are a few pictures I've been carrying around in my pocket:

Gigposter 1

This is a poster for the band Interpol that I did with Thomas Scott of Eyenoise. It was hand screen printed in three colors (black, transparent white, and solid white) on a red paper stock.

Walking the Dogs.

On the ritual twilight dog walks with Darcy (wife) and Betty and Miles (dogs), I started taking pictures of the spectacular Florida skies with my cellphone. I probably took over a hundred photos. Every day the sky was different with its own mood and character. I couldn't wait to get out to see what the sky looked like each evening.

I did a few drawings utilizing some of these skies. The drawings above are a couple from that series -- monumental events (a plane plummeting to earth and a superhero on a collision course with a deadly Sidewinder missile) diminished into almost obscurity by the overwhelming color and complexity of an afternoon sky. 

On my web site, oneswellillustrator.com, you can see a later rendition of the second drawing in which I removed the clouds and made the image a totally flat, graphic solution.

Shooby doo dwop. Binga ding dong.

A while ago, Eric Nemeyer (ericnemeyer.com), vibraphonist and publisher of Jazz Improv Magazine found a few of my jazz portraits online through a random Google image search. He was pretty impressed and thought I just might be the guy to design the packaging for his soon-to-be-released CD, Blessing In Disguise. He gave me a call. I jumped at the chance for this project. I hadn't designed CD packaging but it was certainly something on my list of things to do. Unfortunately, Eric didn't have any money for the design but we worked out a deal where I would get a full color ad in his nationally distributed magazine for an unspecified period of time (actually, I think the ad is still running years later).

Jazz LP designs of the 50s, especially the  Reid Miles covers for Blue Note, were my conceptual starting point. Many examples of these excellent covers can be seen at pixagogo. One of my early designs could've been in any 1959 American record store (the first design above). As appealing as I thought it was, it seemed there should be more emphasis on the artist. Since we didn't have any photography appropriate for a CD cover, an illustrative style that fit in with the Blue Note-like direction had to be developed.

This was a funny case where the illo style came from the typography. I found a roughly-hewn script style that looked like it was cut out of paper with an Xacto knife. This inspired me to draw the vibraphonist's hands with the same cut-out roughness. The drawing and the design happened fairly quickly. I used flat, simple colors to try to heighten the sense of excitement created by the lively and intense music. The disc label was a reiteration of the cover. All in all I think it was a fairly successful design. 

During this time, my daughter Hannah asked me to design the invitation for her high school senior recital. Since I was in full Blue Note mode, it turned out looking something like this: