Podcast Interview on PodKISSt

After doing my first live radio interview for WXRX I did another, slightly longer interview for the KISS fansite “PodKISSt“. In this interview I discuss influences on my work, how the two covers for KISS came to be, the limited edition prints of those covers, international problems with the KISS logo, crazy fans, and some advice for budding young artists out there.

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Fonts In Use – Major League (In a Minor Way)

Recently Andy Heckathorne brought to my attention that Major League Baseball had used Metroscript in their logo for this years World Series logo. Admittedly it’s not a major part of the design, but as Andy pointed out “It’s the WORLD Series!”.

In the Metroscript Manual I wrote that “You can change the proportion of the set type by scaling it either horizontally or vertically.” The designer here has really pushed the reproportioning by scaling the type vertically at 72%. Below the sample is the un-reproportioned type. I don’t know who the designer is who worked on this logo, but if anyone out there knows and wants to send me that info I’d like to properly credit him or her.

Actually I’m no stranger to the World Series logo, having actually designed it once some years back. I wasn’t terribly thrilled with this design (below) so I tweaked it a bit a few years later, and that newer version is the one I now show on my website.

It was interesting for me to notice that the letterforms I used in this logo were in some ways precursors to the forms in both Metroscript and Deliscript.

I’d been using script letters similar to these in my assignment work for years before creating those fonts.

While I’m on the subject of the World Series, as a side note I thought that it might be worth mentioning that my wife, illustrator/designer extraordinaire Laura Smith, did a series of illustrated scorebook covers for Major League Baseball for what became known as the “Subway Series” in 2000.

Announcing Grafika: It’s a New “Old” Font . . . (or is it an Old “New” Font?)

I’m very pleased to announce the release of Grafika, a font design that has been “in the making” for many more years than I’d care to remember! Currently it can be purchased on both Font Bros and MyFonts.

Grafika began its genesis when I received a call to work on a feature film. That phone call came from Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, the reknowned team who have given us such films as “A Room With a View”, “Howard’s End” and “Remains of the Day”. The assignment was to create a title treatment for their upcoming film “Savages“.

The title treatment (above) that I created to reflect the Art Deco sensibility of the film was so well received that it was decided that we would emulate its elegant, elongated look in all the typographic elements of the film. To do that I needed to create what would be my first complete font design. So taking my design cues from the logo I had created, I put pencil to paper and came up with a basic character set. Then I inked it on vellum (which was as hi-tech as it got at that time), and had it photographed and positioned on a roll of Typositor film.

Over the years I had forgotten about this font design. My career became totally about assignment work. I hadn’t gone back to designing fonts until recently when I started doing it again under my foundry name Alphabet Soup. Recently I unearthed a poster for Savages which contained all the credits set in that nameless font I had designed for the film. Looking at it again after all these years I realized that for a young designer this hadn’t been bad. So I decided to revisit it, and to add Grafika to my collection at Alphabet Soup.

To see Grafika in more detail, you can download the PDF brochure I’ve created (3.5 MB). As always, I welcome your comments!

WXRX/Live Radio Chat

Today I did my very first live radio interview with Stone and Double T at WXRX radio out of Rockford Illinois, home of the landmark Coronado Theater. I chatted with them about my work on KISS’ album covers: both “Rock and Roll Over” and “Sonic Boom”.

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The Return of . . . KISS (#2)

When Paul Stanley came by my studio to discuss how to proceed on the art for the cover of their upcoming CD/DVD package “Sonic Boom”, I had no idea what to expect. I hadn’t met with him since working on Rock and Roll Over, and had very little memory of what that had been like. Any anxiety I had melted away when we started talking. Paul is a “gentlemen’s gentleman” and I immediately felt at ease talking with him—as if all those years had not intervened since the last time we had spoken. After some small talk he explained what he was after with the new cover art. His vision for this album was to make it as vital and raw as it had been when they did RaRO. He felt that that had been some of the best work that they had ever done, and wanted the new album to recreate that energy both musically and visually. While he didn’t want me to reprise what I had done with my art for the earlier cover, he did want me to try to capture some of the same spirit, attitude, energy, and look that I had instilled in that piece. Also one of his stipulations was that unlike RaRO (where I had created abstract, graphic versions of the KISS personas) this time he wanted photographic representations of the four group members in full makeup.

When I did RaRO I had a 12″ canvas to work on. Now with CD covers and digital booklets that canvas had been reduced to less than 40% of its original size. Designing in a 4¾” space poses some very different problems from what I faced while working on covers for vinyl releases. In fact the older cover design would not have worked at that size, it’s many elements would have felt crowded into a small space. So the elements of Sonic Boom had to be bigger, bolder—and fewer. I made the decision to make the title the main focus of the graphics, moving the other elements (faces, KISS logo) into prominent—but subordinate—roles.

So I set about putting pencil to paper and trying to solve this the way I solve any other design problem. I did not want to get psyched-out by thinking too much about how the new design would compare with RaRO. That cover had taken on a life of its own and had become a pop culture icon. Creating an iconic cover could not have been one of my goals. All I was capable of doing was to try to create the most compelling graphics possible within the parameters and limitations that had been set out for me. So I started out at the core of this design by creating what I call a “word constellation” out of the title. I tried to make it communicate its meaning visually by not only making it angular and “explosive”, but also by creating a shape that was somewhat suggestive of flight—a “flying wing”, if you will. Bearing in mind the symmetrical, mandala-like layout of RaRO I started designing the new piece as a field growing out of the center of the square, with the four members faces moving outwards from the center, and capped with my version of the ubiquitous KISS logo.

It took about a week for me to develop my sketch to the point where I felt confident in what I had come up with. As I had done with RaRO, I felt so strongly about this cover design that I decided to not present any other options—I wanted this to be the ONE.

This is the rough pencil I first presented to Paul. I held my breath as he first took it in, and then was able to exhale when I saw a big smile appear on his face.

Next: A few changes and the final art.

The Return of . . . KISS (#1)

I’ve been waiting a few months to be able to talk about this—and I have talked about it to some degree in a few online interviews, but not really in any detail. Back in April of this year I received a telephone call from out of the blue—from somewhere in South America. At the other end of the line was KISS’ Paul Stanley. It’d been more years than I cared to remember since we last spoke. That was when I had done the cover art for “Rock and Roll Over”—KISS’ 5th album and their 2nd to go Platinum. So you can understand my surprise when Paul asked if I’d be interested in designing the cover art for KISS’ first studio album in 11 years—which Paul himself was producing.

That’s when I started remembering how exciting it was the first time around, to have been involved in that fast-paced world of entertainment and music. For me it had been a far cry from doing the corporate logos, magazine and book covers I had been working on at the time. An “edgy” job for me then was doing a spread for High Times (yep, they’ve been around for a while)! I’ve always enjoyed the fact that doing what I do has enabled me to straddle many different design worlds, from the fairly straight to the totally off-the-wall. I always tried to say “yes” to just about anyone who was adventurous enough, and had the vision to see how having me design for them could work to their advantage. At any rate I had said “yes”to KISS the first time around (even though I had no idea what I was doing), so of course I again said yes to Paul. We agreed to meet when he returned at the conclusion of their South American tour.

Much to my surprise the “Rock and Roll Over” cover had in recent years become one of the most—if not the most—talked about piece of art in my portfolio. It was a little bewildering to me how over the years that cover had become an icon for this iconic group. I’ve been contacted by more people about my KISS artwork in the past 6 or 7 years than in all the years prior, and more than any other piece I’ve ever done including the New York Knicks logo. So the expectations for this new art I was to work on were quite high.

Next: the new cover design revealed.

Letter Cult Interview

For those of you who are interested, an extensive interview with me can be found on Letter Cult.

Overspray

At the very beginning of my career I hooked up with airbrush wiz Charles White III. He rented me deskspace in his studio on Lexington & 26th Street in Manhattan, and helped give my career the push it needed. We did quite a bit of work together in those days—work that I’d like to think was groundbreaking illustration work. Rather than have typography slapped over an illustration, we tried to figure out new and inventive ways of integrating letter and image. This is evident in pieces like the Chubby Checker album cover where the title was part of the illustration—contained in the Checker Cab-like decal I created—or the Gentle Giant cover where I painstakingly figured out what dimensional lettering would look like as it wrapped around a glass jar. One of our first collaborations was the incredibly complex Screaming Yellow Zonkers poster which took a more traditional approach to the integration of letterforms and illustration.

Charlie is finally getting the recognition he deserves for that early work in the just released book Overspray by Norman Hathaway. The book features Charlie who, along with fellow artists Dave Willardson, Peter Lloyd and Peter Palombi, formed a quartet of California artists that transformed the illustration landscape in the ’70s. Charlie, Dave and Norman together with legendary designer and art director Mike Salisbury (who contributed an essay to the book) were all in attendance at a book signing at FAMILY in Los Angeles on 11/12/08. To see photos from the FAMILY booksigning (which includes the back of my head) and some discussion from Norman Hathaway about the process and problems he encountered putting together this book, check out his Overspray Blog. To see more of Charlie’s work from this period, I’ve put together a PDF of images (not currently available) culled from his website. Throughout his career Charles White III has been consistently one of the most interesting talents around. Visit his Olio website to see what he’s been up to.

No Second Chances?

They say there are no second chances, but recently I found that statement to be not entirely true. I’ve designed and executed art for many covers of TIME magazine. I was never entirely pleased with the cover I did for TIME’s “Cocaine Wars” story. I had originally wanted to focus the design around a skull image, and to have the letters in “Cocaine Wars” have snowcaps on them like the letters you’d see on ice machines. But the powers-that-be at time had me eliminate the skull (too menacing) and in it’s place illustrate a small mound of “cocaine”. The result as you can see was a still a fairly good cover but with a focal point that was kind of anti-climactic.

Fast forward to present day: Rick Klotz of FreshJive—an LA streetwear manufacturer, who also runs his flagship store Reserve in the heart of the Fairfax district—contacted me to see if they could license some of my older designs for silkscreened T-Shirts. He immediately gravitated to some of my TIME covers—including “Cocaine Wars” among others among others. Since I would have to reconfigure the art for silkscreen anyway I immediately saw this as an opportunity to make good on that design that I never felt right about. Freshjive will be distributing that T-Shirt design among others of mine in two different color schemes for their Summer ‘09 line.

For All You ‘KISS’ Fans Out There…

Years ago I did the cover for Kiss’ album “Rock and Roll Over”. When I did it, I styled it after another piece I had done—a cover for the Japanese graphics magazine IDEA. Over the years this piece has gotten more notoriety (founded or unfounded) than almost any other piece of art I’ve done. I’ve done many interviews about my experience doing this cover. This short interview was done for Rockpages Web Magazine, out of Greece, which is part of their year-long special on this rock group. Another more recent interview was done for “Tokyo Five” and can be seen HERE.