My Little Gems pattern collection as wrapping paper
Category Archives: Packaging
Hot Dog!
Looking forward to showing my Clown Collection at Surtex:
I collect discarded photos of people wearing party hats — I’ll save that for another post!
The only thing on this plate I would actually eat is the mustard
This one was the hardest to photograph because the slice of cake kept disappearing
Los Estéticos
I love the silk screened paper bag that contains the CD
Very happy with the CD and logo I designed for Mexican band Los Estéticos, which arrived in the mail yesterday. See my original post on the project.
On Stage: The Haunted Hillbilly
The Haunted Hillbilly
Montréal’s Centaur Theatre
May 8 – June 3, 2012
The award-winning musical based on
the novel by Derek McCormack.
Produced by Sidemart.
I saw it 3 times last summer in Toronto at Theatre Passe Muraille!
Featuring all-original music by Matthew Barber, this season’s production launches the soundtrack on both vinyl and CD. The album includes twelve songs from the play and has guest appearances by Doug Paisley, Justin Rutledge, Oh Susanna, Julie Fader and of course, Matthew Barber (and others!). The album will be exclusively available at the theatre during the run of the show and will have a wider release in June.
The hatch-show style poster for the original theatrical production & Derek McCormack’s book
Matthew asked me to design the cover for him — such an honour!
I wanted to keep the same character I used on the original book cover and poster – the skeleton in a cowboy hat, playing guitar. I found this old photo at a flea market and altered the person’s face to resemble a skull.
Found photo and collage
This doesn’t have the impact I was looking for. Dropping the photo and
updating the illustration I came up with something more effective:
Introducing characters from the story: the lonesome cowboy, and the vampire bat
Something closer to the original poster could work. I used a
typeface that is easier to read at smaller sizes, but the type and the
cowboy are competing for attention — more revisions!
Thinking of bats, some snapshots I took at the South
End Cemetery in East Hampton came to mind:
Nathan Baker, who died by the fall of a tree, South End Cemetery, East Hampton
I’ve always liked those little angels on tombstones. They remind me of bats.
Changing one angel wing to a bat wing and adding cowboy hats,
I came up with this new design:
One of 26 variations – my second favourite, with a leather and denim texture
I wanted to keep the new cowboy so used him elsewhere:
The lonesome cowboy appears in the liner notes
I really liked the leather and denim colours on the design, but we
decided something warmer and more colourful would
be better. It’s more musical, more sideshow, more carnival.
The final design:
Matthew Barber's new 12-inch vinyl
In Montréal? Order tickets for the play here.
Matthew Barber’s webpage.
Derek McCormack’s reading list.
Patterns
Here are some more images from my patterns portfolio
Something new: my “Busy Town” collection
One of my “99 Clowns” patterns
Another from my ice cream series... Table cloth? Tea towels? Aprons?
One of a series of abstract patterns based on a can of sewing machine oil
This last one is my favourite. It’s inspired by an antique Singer Sewing Machine Oil can, one of which I have in my studio. I will be having this pattern printed on fabric for a project I am working on. I think it would make a great liner for a jacket, too.
In this design, my illustration of the can itself takes up a small portion of the surface. In the background I have taken apart the shapes and colours and created something a little more abstract. I have intentionally not used the Singer logo as I felt it is the colour and shapes that make the oil can recognizable. Instead I have reduced it to this hand-drawn S. The price is from the original can, but again, hand drawn. The only typesetting I did was for the ‘Sewing Machine Oil’ text, the content volume, and the ‘Made in U.S.A.’ tagline. The sewing machine graphic is not part of the original Singer design, but used to enforce the origins of this graphic.
New Website!
I have completely redesigned my website in html so you don’t have to wait for those fancy flash files to load. I’ve also launched a new line of patterns — designs for any surface. Who wouldn’t want a wall full of ice cream sandwiches?
NEW PRINTS: Vintage Canadian Mascots
Can-D-Man print
Something new in my online shop!
Scott-Bathgate Limited’s Can-D-Man character has been a favourite of mine ever since I can remember. In The Lakehead, where I grew up, there was a food distribution centre that had Can-D-Man on their outdoor signage and my grandmother’s kitchen cupboard was full of their red and white packaging — like this one, which I kept:
The sign is long gone and on my last visit to Winnipeg I made sure I
stopped by their national headquarters to take a couple of shots:
Scott-Bathgate Limited was founded in 1903
Friends for life
When I was a kid, I believed I was a member of the Nutty Club. This second image is part of a series of works I am creating about The Lakehead. This image is also available as a print from my online shop.
I ate 100s of packages of these growing up in Fort William
Just tearing open one of these paper bags of sunflower seeds was like a visit to the circus, or the barber shop. I found this photo on Jason Liebig’s photostream. He has amassed a wonderful collection of vintage packaging, mostly from the 1970s.
