Vane Tempest sessions on a boat!

This Monday we're holding our most exclusive Vane tempest Sessions on the Prince Bishop, a boat that sails up and down the River Wear. During the day the boat normally transports tourists to see the sights of the city from the river but at night it is hired out for birthdays, barbecues and this time round for a gig!

As this is the last Vane Tempests Sessions of the year, it required a nice new set of publicity. I decided to embrace fully the predictable nautical theme but put my own stamp onto it by hand drawing rope and a life belt in the same style as previous flyers and posters. I especially like the coiled up rope, it was simple to do yet effective I think.

I originally only had colour on the blue and white stripes (incidentally, they're from a top of mine that I scanned!) but it looked a bit dull. I tried to make the life belt red in sections but it didn't look good so it ended up being font that was highlighted.

This poster was rather hastily put together this evening because we decided it would be good to have something bigger to catch peoples eye. I think it does the job okay.

I'm looking forward to this event on Monday night. The music is promising to be of a really high standard. Sir Paul McCartney is a fan of Thomas J. Speight which is a promising start and Rams' Pocket Radio is currently on tour with Foy Vance. If you've never made it along to Vane Tempest Sessions before and you don't have plans yet for next week than this isn't one to miss! Even if you have been before, this is looking like an evening on a par with Dry the River and Flight Brigade.

See you on Monday!

Last-Minute and on a Shoe-String

We're running Vane Tempest Sessions for one final night this year and decided fairly last minute that it would be a good idea to have a poster to remind students we were back after the Easter holidays. However there wasn't any time to get posters printed in colour so I went for the black and white approach to keep costs down when printing from home. Normally publicity takes me a few hours to get looking just right but this one took about 15 minutes!

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.

Vane Tempest Sessions

Back in October a friend asked me if I wanted to think about starting a live music night for students in Durham. After a lot of coffees and planning meetings we began Vane Tempest Sessions (named after the room we use in the Students Union). We promote up and coming indie/ folk artists from around the country and have talented Durham students supporting. My friend tends to oversee the music side of things, booking bands etc, whereas I'm responsible more for the creative side of things such as designing the artwork, but it all overlaps quite a lot.

Some of the objects we've collected

Our venue has a capacity of about 140 people so the gigs are really intimate and we make the most of this atmosphere with lanterns, fairy lights, vintage items and leather sofas.

Our first ever flyer design

When I was designing the logo I went for the hand-drawn look as a contrast to all of the computerised artwork out there at the moment and it's gone down really well.

Christmas Special flyer

It's so much fun being involved in something like this and I get to see so much live music which is fantastic. We've had bands such as Athlete, Emily and the Woods and Dry The River come play for us.