Jennifer Evans: The Last Cheap Hotel Promotional Package

I have been working for the last several months through New Arts Collaborative on a promotional package for folk singer Jennifer Evans. This included updating the look of her website and designing the cover for her new CD, “The Last Cheap Hotel.”

Evans’ elegant mezzo, her insightful phrasing and her warm connection with audiences make her a spellbinding performer and balladeer. The stories she tells with song — some of the most memorable composed by her brother Griff —  deliver us into the throes of joy, love, loss, remembrance and hope. The design of the materials was determined partly by the singer's personal preferences, but also by the mood and social conscience of the music. 

The first thing was to develop a mood board. One of Jennifer's music heroes and influences was folksinger Woody Guthrie. This seemed to call for a visual style that would capture something of the period in which he was singing, 1930's depression-era Americana. I started looking at a lot of depression-era artwork including Edward Hopper, to try to come up with a look and feel for the package. I developed some "theme boards" comprised of images from that period.
Working with Jennifer,  New Arts Collaborsative principal Rae Francoeur and photographer Kathy Tarantola scouted locations on the north shore and tried to pin down a wardrobe for the shoot. They eventually found a large Victorian house to serve as a backdrop/setting in Jennifer's hometown of Danvers. Although not a "cheap hotel" it had the proper kind of run-down gentility that we were looking for.

They tried numerous poses, and several different outfits before we all agreed on one that we liked.
Once the main images and style were set, I began designing the CD packaging.  We decided to go with Oasis Disc Manufacturing http://www.oasiscd.com as the vendor, and after exploring several options for packaging, decided to use one of their environmentally-friendly CD-UD100 digipaks.
This went through many many rounds of changes and revisions on image, type and configuration until we arrived at this design for the CD package.

 This is the front and back cover layout, and a sample spread for the 16-page insert booklet.

We decided to go with a solid-color design for the CD itself.

Once the CD print packaging was completed, the next step was to redesign Jennifer's website to more closely reflect the new album . This is the homepage for the old website. It was perfectly functional, but had not been updated in several years.

Using iWeb and some third-party applications for customization, I developed a design for a new, quick, inexpensive and easy-to-maintain, 6-page website that would include links to social media, sites where you could listen to and purchase the music, download the lyrics and press photos, and generally reflect the new branding of the CD packaging.  Below are three sample pages from the new site. http://jennifer-evans.com
As of this posting it is still being updated, and revised.

In addition to the CD packaging, as we approached the actual release of the album, I designed and produced a number of other print collateral pieces that were either sent to Radio stations and promoters, were included with the CD at performances, or appeared as PDFs on the website for download.
These included a Q&A document:

A description of the tracks on the album.

A press release.

A lyric sheet.

Rockport Music Postcards for Summer 2013

More postcards designed for the Rockport Music Association, based at the Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, Ma. Produced through the New Arts Collaborative and printed at Cricket Press in Manchester, Ma.

Sharp Suits: A Creative Catharsis

It has been a while since I have re-posted anything from another blog, but this was just too good to pass up. A friend of mine posted the link to this site on Facebook. It was addressed to all the designers that he knew, it says:
"Ad creatives, designers, animators, directors, illustrators and more took time out to dress up their favourite worst feedback from clients, transforming quotes that would normally give you a twitch, into a diverse collection of posters."
If you have ever worked with a client you have probably heard at least one or two of these. Enjoy!
The link is HERE: http://sharpsuits.net/Home

NEPF Rack Card

The latest piece produced for the New England Pirate Faire and client Pastimes Entertainment. And yes, I did the illustration.

Recent Work - Spring 2012

I haven't posted since April. One might think I was slacking, but I have been pretty busy with projects, as well as maintaining 6 blogs and several websites. I am also working on a logo for a new, Boston-area theatre company, developing ads for a well-known local music venue, and starting a very large logo/branding project.
Here is some recent print poster work for the STC Salem Theatre Company  and a rack card for the Essex National Heritage Commission for the Essex Coastal Scenic Byway project.

A PICASSO was so popular, the original run of the play was extended by several weeks. This is the extended run version of the poster.

Latest Projects

I've been lax about postings the last month or so, (partly it is because I gave up Facebook for lent), but I'm going to make up for it with this one long one. I have been very busy.
Recent projects I have been working on:

A logo and website for Stage Soup, a Theater program for kids and teens located in Brookline MA.























Event materials for the Institute of Contemporary Art Party on the Harbor including an HTML e-mail invitation, a promotional postcard and a half page ad for STUFF at night magazine.


























































Background screens for a production of the musical PIPPIN at the Arts Center at Endicott College.


































A Logo and graphic standard for the Essex Coastal Scenic Byway. An 85-mile long scenic route that stretches from Lynn to Newburyport. This work is being done for the Essex National Heritage Commission, which works to promote all of Essex County and the North Shore.























It's been a busy couple of months! Hopefully this trend will continue.

LOGO development: Christ The Rock Fellowship

Here is a logo-design project I finished recently. A logo for a church in Worcester, MA. The process took a couple of months. The client said they preferred a square logo and wanted it to contain the basic motifs of the cross, some interpretation of "the rock" and the look of either in color or in shape, of the churches stained-glass windows. Here are my initial sketches. I like sketching out ideas with pen and paper before I get into working it on the computer. I think it gives you a better feel for the logo, and keeps you from getting locked in to a particular font or color too soon. You can see that I came up with the basic workable idea in the first round of sketches.



Here is a photo of one of the churches' windows.



The next step was to refine the sketches, as you can see, I had the name wrong on the initial sketches, it was "Christ the Rock Fellowship", not "Christ of the Rock Church"
I tried a variety of colors, and used some fonts that I though would be good choices given the church is a fairly conservative entity.




Although the client's stated preference was for a square logo, I felt that a more horizontal orientation could also work, and included it in the first round.
The following rounds were refinements in font choice, color, and the relationships between the component elements.



The client had trouble choosing between the square version and the more linear version, and asked me to refine both of them.



This is the final round. The client decided that they really liked both of the logos, and wanted to use both of them for different applications.

Naughty and Nice

Here is a poster I just completed for the Salem Theatre Company. It is for their Christmas Repertory show, Dylan Thomas' "A Child's Christmas in Wales" (NICE) and "The Eight:The Reindeer Monologues" (NAUGHTY). The challenge was to come up with an attention-getting poster/image that would represent both shows without being offensive,
or misleading. Since everyone I know is having a difficult time financially this year, I thought that the lump of coal in the stocking image was appropriate. I just wish I had put "AIG" or "Wall Street" on the stocking.