Getting amped about Amped. Heh.

 

This has to be one of the projects I am proudest of from last year - making a logo for Amped (formerly known as the Chick's Project).

Amped is one of the raddest things in Dunedin providing music mentoring for high school kids, and setting up booze free shows so that they can showcase their skills to their peers (and, to be honest, a lot of older folks like me who can't help but dig their music too).

If you want to download (for free) some sweet tunes made by some hip young things, you can do so here.

Paquin 2012 Tour Poster

Woohoo! What a fun time I had (until I smoked too many cigarettes and made myself seriously ill... never again folks) listening to bands and socializing! Dunedin in December is wonderful if only for the fact that the weather is good, the couches are unburnt, and people who normally live in warmer climes return to have family time.

The Prophet Hens were great, Males were excellent, and Paquin were fantastic. So good to see bands I had (shamefully) never seen before, and at the same time get to hang out with old friends again. <3 br="">

Hey Friends! It appears to be 2013!

Sorry Mayan apocalypse theory lovers, guess you'll have to get out of your bunkers and on with your lives. I am quite happy about it not being the end of the world but it does mean that I really ought to get onto planning both a bathroom renovation and a wedding. Gah! I am a terrible procrastinator and both of these tasks are not the kind of thing you want to leave to chance. Better get onto it eh.

One of the good things about the world not ending in mid-December was that I got to celebrate NYE/my birthday with a bunch of chums. The wonderful Dr. Salis hosted a shin-dig for me at her house complete with a sheet fort in the backyard, temporary tattoos, punch, party hats, delicious snacks, a cake-like thing of deliciousness, pass the parcel, watching the Octagon fireworks from the backyard at midnight, AND a piñata. I tell you, that lady knows how to throw a party.

There are a bunch of things that I have done in the last year that I have that I never posted about - some logos, a couple of posters, and a wedding invite that just went to the printers last week! I will throw some of them up onto this bloggity-blog-blog laters. Promise.

Speaking of things that I have done recently, I painted a room in our house and made a roman blind for the window! Making the roman blind was simultaneously easy and hard - hard because it has been such a long time since I sewed anything that simply pinning two squarish pieces of fabric together and then sewing in a straight line on three sides was a challenge that I was not really up to. Moral of the story is that I need to sew more.

I think the room looks much better now than it did before, but I'll let you guys be the judge using these amazing photos I took before and afterwards.

Before:

After:


Better no? Please forgive the scruffy door - all the doors in our house are equally scruffy, so at least we're co-ordinating well right?

So now we just need to:
- plan a bathroom renovation (purchase all the guff, hire the trades-peeps, get accustomed to hose showers)
- repaint the ex-lounge (now dining room) and buy a dining table that we both like...
- move the pantry to the alcove by the pantry
- move the laundry into the pantry
- put down new floor in pantry/kitchen/laundry (NO MORE CARPET)
- add extra insulation under the house, extra lining to the curtains, and insulate the hot water tank
- build in bookcases in the living room on either side of the fire
- garden. Garden. GARDEN. GARRRGHGHGHDEN.
Easy right? Piece of cake, get that lot finished this weekend no worries.

:-/

Wow

I appear to have undergone one of those momentary lapses you hear people talking about where, for example, you get into your car and you start driving and then BOOM you're parked in front of your house and you've no idea how the hell you got there. I mean, sure, you can figure out that you must have driven but there's a gap in your memory and it's a touch concerning.

That's how I feel about this year. It's middling along in August, then, completely unexpectedly, it's mid-November. Woof! How time flies when you're doing essentially the same stuff every day, every week. My netball skills have vastly improved this year, but concurrently my fingers have been brutalized. Thanks co-ed netball! I also write rhyming couplets in my head now to distract me from customers who make me annoyed. Here is an example:

sorry but brooke fraser doesn't want your babies

when you smile like that it looks like rabies  

 Anyway, I've made a bunch of stuff (better than my customer complaint couplets) that I intend to put on here soon. Just a note to say that I still exist! Heh.

L

Some posters!

I love having friends in bands who contact me and say "any chance you want to whip me up a poster asap?" For the record, the answer will almost always be yes.

Dictaphone Blues | Poor You Poor Me | Paquin | Grass Cannons

The Maybe Pile | The Fu King | Strang and the Strange

Queerest Wine and Cheese Evening Poster

As the designer for OUSA is away on holiday at the moment, I've been doing some bits and bobs for them. This was heaps of fun to make. Such a cheesy couple right? Heh.

Pecha Kucha for Puaka Matariki Poster

Oh yup, I made this too!

Dunedin Midwinter Carnival poster - process

I got asked to make the poster for this year's Dunedin Midwinter Carnival. It's a great event that I've been going to for years to enjoy the festive atmosphere, great lanterns, talented performers, and (above all else) the faces of adorable awestruck kids. I was pretty chuffed to get the chance to contribute to it.

I started off with a concept of a kid exhaling a big cloud of breath - luckily the festival director was down with that so I started off sketching it out a couple of times before moving onto the computer and drawing it up, then refining it.

We decided the kid looked a bit frumpy in their baggy old sweatpants and sweatshirt, so I gave them a makeover making the kid look a bit sleeker and more cosmopolitan. Bam.

The next part was deciding whether or not to include Jack Frost in the breath cloud or not. The festival director really wanted me to put Jack in (as the carnival's theme this year is "A Frosty Night" and the two main stilt walkers are going to be Jack Frost and the Snow Queen) so I drew up a couple of options. There was a fair bit of to and fro on this part.

In the end though, they decided to go with my original concept of the kid on their own. I didn't have to think too hard about font choices as they'd asked me to use the display font that has been used for all their promotional material for the past few years, and I decided on Gotham Rounded for the other text as it's a nice family friendly kind of face. So yeah! That's how the final poster came into existence - I also made a poster for the lantern making workshops which I've popped in for you to have a look at too.

If you're in Dunedin, this is on tomorrow night! Good fun times.

The Eversons - Summer Feeling

In case you haven't already heard of this band of dudes, let me introduce you to The Eversons. Four guys based in Wellington making sweet indie pop together - I recognised Mark from his old band Little Pictures who have played here in Dunedin at (the now defunct) Arc with Blink's (now defunct) Low Hum Tours years ago, and also played at the first couple of CALH where I recall they did a sweet, sweet cover of Buddy Holly by Weezer.

In any case, I fucking love their album. It's like it was written for people in their late 20s with B.A.s living in New Zealand. It's like they have been facebook stalking my wall for the past four years. It's like they know me maaaaaan. From insecurities about the best part of our lives being over, to never finding that special someone to settle down with, to the constant feeling that everything cool is happening someplace outside of NZ (damn you Melbourne), to the realisation that perhaps that B.A. in Design and Theatre Studies wasn't the best thing I could have done with my life... these guys nail each and every topic with witty lyrics and catchy melodies.

One of my favourite songs from the album is Creepy. In my early twenties, this could have been a song about my obsessive crushes. Here is a video of The Eversons performing Creepy at the BFM sessions for your viewing pleasure.

- You can stream or buy the whole of Summer Feeling online here. It's a steal, it's a deal!

Griping about album packaging design

Working in a music store, I see all kinds of album packaging coming through - from insane amounts of packaging with specially embossed slipcases, through to single cardboard sleeves. In the past few years my ideas about what constitutes good album packaging have crystallised from just knowing what I liked aesthetically, to knowing what WORKS.

Firstly, there are some conventions of packaging an album that I don't think should be broken for numerous reasons, mainly to do with the ability for a store to sell the album well. Sure, we can have the argument that most bands no longer rely on record stores as the main means of selling their music, but if a musician is planning on selling any of their albums in a store, here are some things to consider:

The shape of your packaging: if your CD case can't fit into the store's display shelves/racks/bins, then most likely your case will end up in some dusty corner, badly displayed. It astonishes me that so many artists don't see the logic of making their packaging fit within industry standard guidelines.

The visibility of your spine: sure if you've got a best-selling CD your case is going to be front and centre face out prominently on display, but even the most popular CD is eventually relegated to the bins. This means that your best bet of having someone pull your music out of the masses of other music is to make the spine wide enough to be seen AND to put your name and the title of your CD on the spine. Simple right? The best way a band can avoid this issue, is to make sure that they never release their music in a single pocket cardboard sleeve. Those suckers never have a visible spine and they look like shit. Fact.

Get a Barcode or a CAT number: again, this is simple stuff - if you can't be arsed registering your album for a barcode, get a catalogue number (either from the company distributing your music, or if you're distributing it yourself, just make something up) and place it on both the album and the disc itself. "Oh but Luci!" I hear you cry, "We're self-published! Why would we need a catalogue number?" Well dear reader, it's because a lot of record stores separate the disc from the case - if the disc and the case have a catalogue number, it makes it easy to be sure you are putting the right disc in the right case. This is especially important if either the disc or the case doesn't have your band name and your album title on it.

Which brings me to my next point.

Unless you are mega-super-famous, don't be a tosser; put your name and your album title on the cover. It doesn't have to scream your name, it just has to whisper it at the very least. If that's too cliché for you, at the very least, sticker your cases so that the information is there when it's being displayed.

Finally, and this is one I'm a bit more forgiving about, seriously consider whether you go cardboard over plastic cases. I know plastic cases are worse for the environment and also cost a bit more, but cardboard cases fall apart really easily and they don't protect your music half as well especially if you've got a set-up where the discs need to be pushed and pulled in and out of a tight wee pouch without the protection of  a paper sleeve. Think about how vinyl is packaged - LPs are usually put into a paper slip before they're slammed into the cardboard sleeves. Protection first! A nice solution to look into is the digipak format: having a cardboard outer with a glued in plastic CD tray (like this one,this one, or even this one).

Also, if you are getting cardboard sleeves printed for your album, talk to the printers about the kind of card stock they recommend you use. If you print on certain stocks, when folding and scoring the card into your case, the card will crack and tear the printed image. Printers know which stocks hold up to being brutally folded and scored and are more than happy to share their knowledge. Ask them!

It pays to remember that with the advent of digitized music downloads, if someone is wanting to buy a physical copy of your music, they probably are buying it for the aesthetic delights the packaging holds/nostalgia and ergo they will want it to last - both the physical packaging and the disc itself.

That's about it - what do you think? Do you disagree with me? Or are there other things that bug you about music packaging?