A Very Special Mix CD

Initial drawing for CD cover

Finished front cover in full colour

Back cover with track listing

My boyfriend moved to London this week for a job and I made him a few things to take with him, one of which was a mix CD. I think I had more fun designing and making the cover than putting together the track listing although the whole project was very fun! 

I've designed a CD cover before for a friend who records his own music and I really enjoyed it so it was good to remind myself of that. The previous one was in a similar style with a fairly intricate pen line drawing painted over with watercolour (but unfortunately I never got the original back so I can't post it here).

I loved the look of this artwork when it was just a matt finish but one spilt cup of tea and it would be ruined so I covered it with sticky-back plastic too.

Hopefully this won't be the last CD design to make it onto this blog. They make very good presents so I may well be tempted to design more...

Gig Photography

As a general rule, I don't enjoy function photography. I feel quite intrusive, taking photos of people I don't know and someone always seems to have their eyes shut or their mouth open (or both). The lighting can also be bad and it's tricky using flash whilst still wanting to be subtle! I don't like the pressure of trying to get that perfect photo for someone- I'd rather take it unofficially and then be able to show them it.

Flight Brigade 19th Feb

However when it comes to gig photography, it's an entirely different matter. I started taking photos at Vane Tempest Sessions last term and have done it pretty much every week so far this year. 

Flight Brigade 19th Feb

As I run the Sessions, I don't have the pressure of trying to impress anyone because I only have to meet my own standards, although we do use the photos on Facebook to promote events. There's also not the problem of being intrusive- bands fully expect to have their photos taken at gigs and sometimes they will even ask to have images put on a CD for their own use. So I can take as many photos as I want, whilst obviously being aware of people's enjoyment of the music (it's not great to be listening to a really quiet track and have someone clicking away incessantly behind you). And although the rooms are dark, the lighting is great on the artists and I love playing around with strong light contrasts.

Samuel Brookes 22nd Jan

These a few of my favourite pictures so far. They're not necessarily the biggest bands we've had to play but I like what the images capture of the night.

John Oliver 22nd Jan - Durham favourite beat-boxer

John is the only support act that we've had back three times- he is very talented and always goes down well. For this set, the lighting just seemed to be perfect. Of course having only one person to light rather than a whole band makes things a lot easier too.

Joseph and David 5th March

I find that there are some shots I've got in the habit of taking every week and this is one of them. I think it captures the ambiance of Vane Tempest Sessions in some way.

Emily (and the Woods) 5th March

Because of the strong dark/light contrasts, the temptation is to have my camera permanently stuck on the monochrome mode because black and white photographs look better much more easily. But I have learnt the benefit of flicking back into colour which gives a less stark finish.

Richard Walters 19th Feb

Richard is one of those people who is really expressive when he plays- not just with his face but his whole body. Ideal subject matter for a photographer!

New Term, New Artwork

Term 2 flyer design

We'd been running Vane Tempest Sessions for a term and it seemed like a good idea to produce some fresh artwork in case people were getting bored of the old flyers. I decided to keep the logo and ripped paper on a  brown background for continuity's sake and kept the design hand-drawn but replaced the main tree with a floral design which feels appropriately vintage-y.

Back of flyer

On the back of the flyer, I put the line-up for five consecutive weeks, rather than three (as I did previously), meaning we could print off a bigger batch which have stayed in date for longer.

Poster for February 5th 2011

We also had an extra push when Wolf Gang came to play because they were a slightly bigger band, supported by Emily and the Woods and we were running the night in association with the Grove, a student poetry society. All of this was very exciting so we printed off an extra run of posters, using their own artwork as a background.