Makin' a Flyer aka Nick-style Projects

I get pretty excited when I'm asked to design a flyer for hardcore/punk shows.  It gives me a chance to combine two of my favorite things - drawing and music. So when former Thieves (last band I was in) drummer, Ira, called me Sunday and asked if I could do one, I was stoked. Problem is, I never really know what to draw, so I started flipping through some books trying to get inspired. Nothing. I'd done one last year that was really drawn from street-artist Retna. I don't know how I came across his stuff in the first place, but I loved it. And as Mies Van Der Rohe said, "Don't try to be original. Just try to be good."

First, I blocked off an 8.5"x11" grid in Illustrator so my letters would be even. Then I used a couple of highlighters to draw the letters since the tips are chiseled a bit like calligraphy pens and it let me get the thicknesses I wanted. Do I even own calligraphy pens? Well, one. Don't judge me.

Notice I misspelled "tommorrow." Nice.

Then I scanned that so I could trace my letters in Illustrator and have a more uniform look. Of course my misspelling, plus Ira adding another band, kind of threw that off a bit and made things more interesting.

Once that was finished, I added fills and changed the stroke to a sketchy pen to get back a little of the hand-drawn look.

Not bad! Do you have to struggle to read it? Yeah, that's the idea. Spend some time looking at it. Did I use my initials as one of the symbols I made up? Yep. But I thought still I could do a little more. I did a little interwebbing and found this picture of Stripmines (Ira's band). It's their singer's last show with them so I thought it would be nice to feature Matt. I printed the photo, rolled out some trash - or for those of you who don't work in an architecture office - tracing paper, and grabbed my trusty Prismacolor cool grey markers. These are my go-to for just about anything I draw. Scanned it in, did a little Photoshop clean-up, and this was the result:

Overlay Matt in the corner, and I'm done. The response has been pretty good, even a mention of Sorry State Records doing a silkscreen w/ white and silver ink. Since we'll be road tripping while this show happens (across the street from our office, btw), I'll have to make sure someone saves me a copy.