Leonard Cohen

This is a print ad for Leonard Cohen's load of gigs in the o2 in Dublin. There wasn't any posters printed for these shows, different audience. This ad was printed in the Irish Times. Newspapers have loads of specs like minimum text size etc. So an ad like this can end up looking quite text heavy. This artwork came in as templates but the font was corrupt, after a few attempts we couldn't get it working and with deadlines looming I had to just replace it, I used Plak-Black which was fairly close and looked good. Not sure how we got away with not using the o2 logo on this! shhhhh.

Dazed (1996, 13 years ago!)

That last post on indie discos reminded me of the DAZED days. Dazed was an indie night in Dublin run by two of my housemates (Liam & Biggley). I did their artwork. We did plenty of Letraset/Scalpel/Prit-Stick work but the poster on top here is when I got access to a Mac on a local newspaper and we went digital. It was 1996. I have books full of print outs and notes. The note attached to this poster reads "Entire document re-built on the Performa 400 and lo+behold it works! Have to do to the MacII what i did to the P400. Only problem is I DON'T KNOW HOW I DID IT" and "Justification is rubbish". Great days.

The lads got brave and added a second Dazed night (the Dazed Weekender) that year and pictured here are poster and flyers for their May live line-up. Crap poster but interesting to see the number of bands still going, 1, maybe 2.

Sabotage (indie club 101)

A few years ago, 2006 I believe, I was asked to do a poster for an indie club night in Sligo.

On the left is my initial design. This seemed logical to me, loads of album covers so that students can steal the poster and stick up in their grotty kitchen and discuss all night over tea. Because that's exactly what would have happened in my shared house in the early '90s. By the time I did this it had been a while since I was at an indie night so my selection might have been a bit off. I thought, well surely they're still playing crap like Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box and The Stone Roses' I am the Resurrection? Surely the DJs are now playing crap like The White Stripes, The Arctic Monkeys and The Killers? Plus it's an indie disco, there's always one dj that sticks on The Beach Boys, The Doors and old Bowie. I'm being mean. I snuck in a few of my personal favourites even though they were unlikey to ever be played. Oh and that amazing Cardigans album cover. Anyway I must have got it totally wrong because the design was turned down.

On the right is the poster that actually got used. Which is still a decent job. I just couldn't image it on our kitchen wall.

Discuss.

Atmosphere (part 2)

Second Atmosphere poster, this time from 2008. This one uses Bookman, which I think rarely works. It does here though. Is Atmosphere a juggalo?

Atmosphere (part 1)

American hiphop dude Atmosphere always has cool artwork. Which makes life easy for people in my position working up local tour posters. Here's one from 2004 (I think). This was shortly after CrawDaddy opened. I love the logo he was using back then. Another cool Atmosphere poster in the next post, tomorrow or actually maybe Tuesday (it's a Bank Holiday in Ireland).

Asian Dub Foundation Soundsystem

I've done many Asian Dub Foundation posters over the years. This is the simplest and my favourite. It's from 2005.

Stereolab

Stereolab billboard (30x40" 2 colour screen printed) poster from 2008. My understanding of this poster was to appeal to older fans of Stereolab, the ones who might not have stayed with them as far as Chemical Chords. That's why it looks somewhat like a 'lab poster from the 199os. Maybe my poster helped a bit as the gig sold out in the end I think and a lot of people came out of the woodwork. It was a good gig.

The Fall (Part 2)

Here's an old old The Fall poster. This is from 2001 when they were touring The Unutterable. Back in the days of the Redbox and punts (£). Above is the 2 colour screen printed version. Some funny moments at this gig where Mark was "live mixing", which actually involved walking over to the guitarist's amp and turning it down. The Fall are a band I've just dipped my toes into, what I have I generally like. They've been on my ToDo list for ages now. Too much flipping music...

DJ Woody

From 2006. Nice poster for DJ Woody. Got to admit I didn't and still don't know who DJ Woody is. But hey, he's a two time ITF winner!

Ted Leo twofer

Two posters for Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. The one on the left is from 2007 where Ted's European tour was cut short after the Irish gigs. (Crayonsmith replaced Young Soul Rebels in the end). The poster on the right was for the Dublin gig as part of the rescheduled Euro tour in 2008. My band Large Mound were lucky enough to open the 2007 gig and Ted asked for us to open again in 2008. We actually blagged a few more gigs with The Pharmacists on that tour and played with them in Belfast, Leeds, Nottingham, Bristol and London too. Great days. (more trivia: the line-up pictured in the '08 poster was not the one that played the tour.)

This post is for all the FOT who have been visiting the site recently, thanks.

Yo La Tengo

Here's another poster that's actually live at the moment. Yo La Tengo are coming to Dublin next month. I'm not posting this because of some outstanding contribution to graphic design, it's a pretty standard 'album tour' based poster. It's here because I'm looking forward to the gig, especially after this from Tom Scharpling on The Best Show a few weeks ago; "On Friday night I got to the Roseland Ballroom to see Yo La Tengo. It's awesome! They're doing it. As good as I've EVER seen them. they've got the new album, they're all fired up, they're rocking out, they're doing this they're doing that, they're covering all the bases. Three people up there doing everything. It's shocking when you see them in their element like that. They bounce from this instrument to that instrument. James McNew, he's the most talented dude going. Watch this guy, oh, play bass, oh play keyboards, oh play 12 string guitar, oh play drums, do whatever you want, this guy does it. They were on fire."

Future's Bright '09

Future's Bright was a series of gigs held in January 2009. A sort of "one's to watch" type of thing. I seem to remember the first design of this had to be done pretty quickly, then there was a load of tiny changes made which dragged it out. I manages to maintain that thrown together look I like though.