Mike & Pol Save The Universe

I was asked by the Mike and Pol podcasting team to design a logo for their new show, which I was only happy to do--especially after I saw the insane rough, detailing the elements they wanted included. Mexican wrestlers! Space ships! Lightning bolts! How can you go wrong?

As you might have guessed, this was a blast (no pun intended) to do. You can find Mike & Pol Save The Universe on iTunes and on their show blog. You've been warned!

Comedy Film Nerds

Last Christmas, I ordered an item called a "Chillpak" (a pad that keeps your laptop cool) from the online store of Comedy Film Nerds, a movie/comedy podcast hosted by Graham Elwood and Chris Mancini that I subscribe to.

When the package arrived, it came with a promo postcard for the show, and for whatever reason I got in my head that I wanted to redesign it. I got the overall concept in my head (such as it is), and finally just got around to putting it together over the weekend. The loose idea I hung the design on was that Graham and Chris both featured the same nerdriffic quote (which they end every show with) in their HS yearbooks, meaning they were destined to come together years later and do a show.

As I do with all these graphic design-only pieces, I had a ton of fun putting this together, and I was so happy with it I sent it to Graham and Chris. I don't expect them to do anything with it, I just figured they'd get a kick out of seeing it.

Han shot first!

Live @ The Steve Allen Theater

My pal, actor, and all-around good egg Damian Maffei asked me to put together this flyer for the show he's appearing in on Saturday, 11/12: a staged reading of two plays, By Bizarre Hands and Suckerfish.

Even though the deadline was very tight (Damian told me about it on Friday, and the flyer needed to be done on Monday), I had the time of my life putting this together. I love doing pure graphic design pieces like this, where putting all the elements into a pleasing, attractive layout is like working on a puzzle--a really, really fun puzzle.

It only took a couple of hours to put it together, and after some minor tweaks here and there, the final version was ready to go by late Saturday. Damian showed it off on his FB page, and all the participants seemed to be happy. I told Damian that I'd volunteer to do any and all flyers like this in the future, absurdly-tight deadline or no!

From The Vault: FMOFU Logos Pt.5 - 2010

This was to be the final set of logo designs I worked up for Famous Monsters of Filmland: Underground magazine.

Most of the other logo treatments had been rejected, so I got rid of all the concepts I had been playing around with earlier, and tried to come up with some other looks. Of this group, I really loved the last one--it looked really cool to me, dark and claustrophobic.

The one that was ultimately chosen--#6--I thought was cool, too, with the little drawing of a skull I had lifted from a previous poster I had done. I've said it before, I never throw anything away!

From The Vault: FMOFU Logos Pt.4 - 2010

Yet another set of logo designs I worked up for Famous Monsters of Filmland: Underground magazine.

I really liked the first two--I re-introduced the "paste-up" motif (hoping maybe, by sheer repetition, I could convince the editors to go with it), and I liked the second's red-with-dark bits look.

The third one is way too conventional "monster"-y, I think I probably felt the need to fill the space so I just whipped up one more logo variation...

From The Vault: FMOFU Logos Pt.3 - 2010

Yet another set of logo designs I worked up for Famous Monsters of Filmland: Underground magazine.

That first one is really a toss-off, and never under serious consideration. I liked the second one because of the addition of the blood spatter, a little design element I would incorporate into other FMOFU logo variations.

From The Vault: FMOFU Logos Pt.2 - 2010

This was another set of logo designs I worked up for Famous Monsters of Filmland: Underground magazine.

I really loved this font, and desperately wanted to use it for the logo. In many ways, I think the second one, with the FMOF "paste-up" over Underground, was my favorite of all the logos I put together: there was a simplicity to it that really worked for me.

But, as any artist/graphic designer will tell you, your favorite idea is never the one that gets picked...

From The Vault: FMOFU Logos - 2010

Last month I posted the logo I created for the new Famous Monsters of Filmland: Underground magazine. It was a fun project, even though I ended up creating a ton of other logos that were ultimately rejected.

These are the first three I whipped up--and since there were so many different ways to go about this, I decided to just use one font for the first three tries and work up variations on that.

Since Underground was supposed to have a looser, scrappier feel than its legendary parent, my first concept was to use the classic FMOF logo and apply it like it was a taped-down piece of paper, giving the logo the look of a paste-up, a relic of graphic design from the pre-dekstop publishing days. And maybe the blood spatter was from an errant xacto blade used during the paste-up!

Famous Monsters of Filmland: Underground

The new magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland: Underground debuted this week, so I finally get to talk about the work I did for the mag, as both artist and writer!

My pal and then-editor of the mag April Snellings asked me to design a logo for FMOFU, which you see above. Here's what it looks like on the cover and on some trade ads that have been appearing in the last few months:

The little skull I used in place of the "o" was replaced on the final cover by a photograph, but the essential design is the same (my little skull drawing can be seen throughout the insides, as a button at the end of various articles).

I also have a full-page ad in the mag, which I designed just for the occasion:

I was very excited to work for my pal April (who I call "Chief") and of course its great to have some of my work on the cover of a magazine, especially as the logo: that means it will be seen on every issue. As a lifelong monster fan, I'm really tickled I got to do something involving the classic FMOF franchise (I created about two dozen logo treatments while working on this, so maybe some of those will show up on this blog's "From The Vault" Friday segment).


As I mentioned above, I did some writing for FMOFU too, so head on over to my Rob Kelly Writing blog to check that stuff out. It's a blog crossover!

Hard-Boiled Horror Tales

This is the cover to Hard-Boiled Horror Tales, a new comic written and drawn by one of my oldest friends, Doug Slack. Its currently available in print and online (ooh! technology!) over at DreadCentral.com.

I'm mentioning this here because Doug asked me to do the logo for the book, as well as the main story's pseudo-title card:

I love doing logo work, especially when its for something super-fun like Doug's nastily violent, gory, and profane comic. If those three things appeal to you, go check the book out over at DreadCentral or the Hard-Boiled Horror Blog!

The Razor's Edge

Wow, it's been almost a whole year since I designed a new Razor's Edge book cover!

As regular readers of this blog will know, W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge is my all-time favorite book (I even have a whole blog about it--of course I do), and every so often I find it a fun exercise to design my own cover for it.

I hadn't planned on doing another one (I did one in December '08 and May '09), but then I saw the above photo while Darlin' Tracy was surfing teh interwebs. The photo is by Edward Dullard and is a shot of Ballycotton Island Lighthouse in Ireland, and I was immediately struck, thunderbolt-like, that it would make the perfect main image for another edition of The Razor's Edge.

Graphic design-wise, I wanted the typography to be a little more modern and rough. Classic books when they are reissued tend to look a tad stuffy because they are classics, esteemed examples of literature with a capital L. So I wanted to go the other way, and make it look a little more current.

I added a half-tone effect over the photo to give a slight old-timey feel (in contrast with the type) and make the image feel more like a memory, which I thought was in keeping with events in the book--the entirety of The Razor's Edge is told via multiple flashbacks, primarily those featuring the main character, Larry Darrell. Larry's story is told to the book's narrator, so even within the flashback structure we are beholden to how Larry remembered the events he's recalling.

I just love doing these Razor's Edge covers, they're pure artistic fun. I'm sure this won't be my last...

From The Vault: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Titles - 1999

This was my proudest achievement during my year Koen Book Distributors, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Titles catalog.

I had been given a list of all the catalogs I would be designing shortly after I started at Koen, so I knew when the Sci-Fi one was coming and I had always planned to make it really special. I would work on it in bits and pieces in between other duties.

I wanted the cover to be a rip-of...er, homage to my favorite movie poster of all time, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. I even grabbed a piece off of that poster, and used it as the crowd running amok in the foreground. I took the monster from some old comic book ad, and then dropped all the Koen-specific text on top.

I wanted some sort of graphic theme to run through the whole thing, so I had clumps of little flying saucers streaking through the text, as well as brief intro about the wonders of science fiction on the inside cover. The final page even featured the classic "The End...or is it?" gag.

When I look back on this now, of course I think I could do better, but at the time this was fairly ambitious of me to put this much thought and effort into the design, and I was really, really proud of it. We got some positive word back from some customers saying how much they liked it, and that meant a lot to me. It remains the highlight of my time and work while I was at Koen.

From The Vault: Civil War Titles - 1999

This was another catalog I did for Koen Book Distributors, since it was such a narrow field of books the catalog itself was only about 16 pages; leaving not a whole lot of room, time, or motivation to get too fancy with the design.

The thing for me that really brought this off was the paper--I mentioned the feel I was going for to the outside printer we used (a delightful man, always a blast to have around, full of great stories), and he suggested a sort of parchment paper they had in stock that wasn't too expensive.

My boss ran the numbers, okayed it, and so the whole catalog ran on the type of paper you might have seen during that era (though not as fragile, of course). I was thrilled with the result and even though the graphic design by itself is nothing spectacular, it all came together perfectly.

From The Vault: "Loose Canons!" - 1999

This was another catalog I did for Koen Book Distributors during my year there as a graphic designer.

Loose Canons! was Koen's big catalog of the year (half-year, actually, since we did two of them)--a hodge-podge of books from all different genres, a lot of marketing and sales effort was put into it, so much so a Koen employee who was some sort of alt. book specialist would come to NJ twice a year to help guide the catalog's creation.

For all the eyes that were on the catalog, the overall graphic design was surprisingly little commented upon--maybe because everyone was so busy worrying about the rest of it. This was the second of two Loose Canons! I designed, and by this point I was sort of punchy so I decided to just go totally goofy and make up all sorts of crazy fake newspaper-style stories, most of them featuring in-jokes that only other Koen employees would get (click the image to see a readable version).

I remember submitting this to my boss at the time, who laughed a lot and said he loved it (not a total surprise, since that's his daughter pictured at bottom). It then went to the head of sales, who only had one small revision, a joke I had made at a competitor's expense. I thought that was eminently reasonable and changed it, and the cover--and catalog--went out just like you see it.

From The Vault: Gay & Lesbian Interest Catalog - 1999

I thought I'd cast my From The Vault net a little wider again this week; digging up a graphic design piece I did back when I worked at Koen Book Distributors, doing design and layout work for their marketing department.

Doing the graphic design work for Koen was a great learning experience and one of the creatively satisfying jobs I ever had; my boss had no pretensions about how the catalogs should look, so he simply made sure they met certain standards ever Koen catalog needed; the rest was up to me.

So after a few weeks of getting up to speed, I really poured my heart into making these catalogs as visually arresting as possible--I think I ended up producing about two dozen different ones, and out of that group there's a handful that I think rank as some of my best work, even now.

This Gay & Lesbian Interest Catalog was one of them; I wanted a sophisticated, fun look, appealing to a literate, engaged demographic. This ended up printed on a nice, thick, slightly rough cardstock, making for a really sharp final product.

From The Vault: Drive-In Theater - 2001

Its been a little while since I did a From The Vault segment--Friday kept coming around and I had forgotten to find something, on top of the fact that some of the stuff in the vault is so bad I don't want anyone to see it, even in fun.

I didn't want another week to pass having missed yet another Friday, so I rooted around my HD a bit and found this unfinished piece of business--a flier I was asked to design by a friend who was putting together his own genre film screening program called Drive-In Theater. It needed to have lots of big open space that could be filled by that week's films, so I had to design around that pre-fab area.

I don't really remember whatever happened to DIT--I think it sort of died before it ever got started--but I'm still really proud of the design. I think its slick and sorta grubby at the same time, and every time I look at it I'm sorry Drive-In Theater never became a reality.

San Diego Zoo - 2003

I did this piece--using a bunch of animal portraits I had recently finished--purely as a graphic design exercise. Its really simple, but I loved how it came out.

Princess In Exile

My pal, writer Chris Wichtendahl, asked me to do the cover to his newest book, Princess in Exile, a long while ago.

I'm ashamed to admit, it took me forever to work on it, because as I read the book and was flooded with all the fantastic sci-fi concepts contained therein (Chris is a fountain of ideas, as one look at his website will attest), I simply couldn't compose one image that I felt represented the story.

When I finally did sit down to sketch it out, I really got in my own way and designed this hugely ambitious cover, comprised of almost half a dozen vignettes, representing moments from the book. I wasn't all that pleased with it--aside from the terror of how I'd actually pull the thing off to completion--but because I had taken so long to show Chris something I sent it off to him anyway.

His reaction was polite but mixed--I could tell that it wasn't really what he wanted, and a few weeks passed before we discussed it in detail. Then, out of the blue, this other cover idea--pretty much exactly what you see here--popped into my head, almost entirely fully formed.

Not only would it easier to complete, but it was a lot closer to the old school style 70s/80s paperback look that Chris told me he wanted in the first place--mostly text with one small element from the book (in this case, a wooden sword the main character wields). I sent this version off to him, and just minutes later he told this was it!

He made a couple of small suggestions which I implemented, and all of a sudden a project that had become a tedious slog did a u-turn. Now we were both happy--Chris got the cover he wanted, and I was able to deliver on the promise I had made.

The Razor's Edge

I've mentioned here before that W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge is my favorite book; I've read it a few dozen times and it never ceases to enthrall me.

I like it so much, in fact, that I created a whole blog devoted to my collection of Razor's Edge editions (called Principles of Psychology), and I've even tried my hand at designing a new cover for the book.

The first time I tried it, I thought I did okay but in retrospect I think I was a little heavy-handed with the whole "man on a spiritual journey" motif, so I had it in the back of my mind to try it again, the result of which you see above.

The picture is from the collection of my late, Great Uncle Fred (1901-1997), who I've also mentioned here before and whose stories and photos of his adventures thrilled me as a child.

When going through some old photos my parents had down in their basement, I saw this one, and it immediately struck me as the perfect image for The Razor's Edge. Not only does it feature the kind of "man looking into the horizon"-type image that's perfect to represent the story, but the photo itself (which I had to crop a lot here, since its horizontal) is simply a beautifully composed image--I love the heavy darks at the top and bottom, with the strong white of the water in the middle. Uncle Fred was a damn good photographer. (An aside: none of us are sure, but that might even be my Dad in the pic!)

I saw no need to use any of my illustrations in this cover, preferring it to be a simple graphic design piece. I had a lot of fun figuring out what font to use, and where to put Maugham's name, the title, and the book's epigram ("The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard").

I think with this version I hit a nice balance between making the book look like the enduring classic it is, but not making it look like a museum piece. I find The Razor's Edge just as relevant today as it (presumably) was when it debuted in 1944. The fact that its still in print to this day I think proves that.

So, I really like this new cover I worked up, but who knows? I might feel the need to create another one, just like I'm always compelled to re-read the book...

The Wolf Man

My favorite still from the Wolf Man remake--opening this Friday--is this one, featuring Emily Blunt's character hiding in the woods from the Wolf Man. Its classic Universal, and the scene featuring it in the preview gives me hope this movie will get what makes the Wolf Man story so compelling.

I first tried to do this as an illustration, with all the other design elements you see here in place, but it just didn't look right. Maybe I didn't do a good enough job on it, I don't know, but I liked the idea too much just to give up.

So I decided to do this as a pure design piece, and after fiddling with the photo a bit (the original still is much more horizontal; I had to press the two main elements closer together), it all fell into place and looked exactly like I wanted it to.

And even though it doesn't feature any of my illustration, I think this one is my favorite of the two Wolf Man posters. It would get me to see the movie, at least.