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Baltimore based graphic artist and dj, Logo has just finished up the teaser flyers for 2008 Baltimore Music Conference. I liked his illustrations since I first saw his work and this flyer really shows off the detail and intricacy of the characters and scenes he creates. Click the images below to see the larger flyers.

From the Buzzlife message boards, Logo tells us:

“Since this is a teaser flyer, the objective is to pique public interest in the BMC—sponsors, performers, and attendees alike. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to really emphasize the MORE MUSIC in “Baltimore Music Conference,” and since it’s a few months away, I thought it would be fun to add “IS COMING,” so that, at first glance, it reads “MORE MUSIC IS COMING.”

As soon as I thought about how those words would look on a flyer, I immediately envisioned a menacing Tripod War Machine from the War of the Worlds to kind of symbolize the approaching BMC.

Because the BMC showcases all types of music, I wanted the imagery to reflect music in general, and not get hung up on representing all types of instruments or audio equipment. So, morphing my SpeakerBot with a WOTW Tripod seemed like the way to make these two ideas work together.

H.G. Wells’ original story was written in 1898, and in 1938, a Martian Invasion mock news report was broadcast over the radio, creating mass hysteria.

Aesthetically, I wanted my flyer to reflect the stylistic qualities of the 1930s, but with a bit of a modern twist.
Thus the neo-Art Deco typefaces and flourishes.
Be on the lookout for posters which will hopefully be going up soon!”

I’ll be looking out for the posters, I might just have to steal me one.

Links
Logo on Myspace
Logo’s design gallery on Flickr
Baltimore Music Conference on Myspace
Baltimore Music Conference on Sonicbids
www.BMCon.org 

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of being one of three invited designers at the March installment of X. X is a monthly gathering of people that celebrate the creative culture in DC. The event usually includes an invited fashion designer, djs, visual artists, graphic designers and many others.

The three graphic designers that are invited are given three words by a curator and with those three words the designers must then go and create something keeping those words in mind and also being sure to include the X formula which is X = LIVE (PERFORMANCE + ART + PROJECTIONS + ELECTRONICA + FASHION) + YOU! Designers have a time period of 4 hours to create something while three projectors showcase each designer’s process and of course final product.

At the end of the event, the curator chooses a winning design. This month’s curator was Jesse Cohen from ArtDC.org and the words given to us were: Erotic, Halftone and Liquid. Below is the winning design, which I created broken down into small pieces. You can click on individual pieces of the design to see a larger version of that piece and see the details of the halftone.

The Design

The Process
I wanted my design to be a poster in case I wanted to print it out later so I started off with an 11×17 canvas in Photoshop. I first focused on the word “erotic” and researched images related to burlesque and together with halftone patterns was going to move into 1940’s and 1950’s pin up girls. I knew I didn’t have enough time to illustrate something, so decided to stick with photographs.

I used Adobe Kuler to come up with a burlesque colour scheme (Go to Adobe Kuler and search “Honest Burlesque” to see the colour scheme I started off with) I remembered I had an old picture of the pope that I had found on a trip to Italy and had scanned in, so for “liquid” I decided I was going to go with holy water and to make it more obvious I decided to put “Aqua Sanctum” which is Latin for holy water.

At the end of the 4 hours it turned into a real pimp pope hanging out with some really trashy twins and kicking back with his crew of real life pin up girls which are all begging to be blessed by the pope’s holiest of waters. I achieved the halftone effect by making copies of all my layers, desaturating them, then pixelating then turning down the opacity on all of the halftone layers. I used scanned images of papers to give the picture some texture and dirtied it up a bit more with some brushes in Photoshop. Here are some links to the final image:

1024 x 663 jpeg of poster
800 x 518 jpeg of poster
High Resolution PDF at 11 x 17 (Large File)

Thanks to everyone that came out and supported, thanks to X for inviting me and shout out to the other talented designers that I met Sarah Foster and Chris Spade, who also created some awesome pieces.

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