Joe Damico cd cover

Hey all,

Great idea for a blog! The Bureau has made a conscious effort to try to take on more music related projects this coming year. In fact we have been toying with the idea of launching a tiny independent label to release my side projects as well as some of our friends who are musicians.

Anyway, this is a piece I did for Joe Damico who is a great singer / songwriter. We have done numerous projects for him in the past and it's always been great projects. Joe lets us have free reign over the creative. He is one of the rare musicians who understand their craft and trust us to do our thing which is easy for us since Ty and I are big fans of Joe's music.

For this upcoming release, Joe wanted to actually put out vinyl as well as the cd. The 12x12 space of a record sleeve is the holy grail for Ty and myself, so I couldn't wait to rock something out. I pitched the idea to Joe of doing an illustration / layout that paid homage to the classic Decca era jazz covers. Originally we wanted to do something a little more Reid Miles' Blue Note era but I felt like that has been done to death.

It was important to me to really get the look and feel just right. I didn't want it to look "faked" in any way. The typography had to use the right font and have the looseness of being set by hand. In order to make sure it had an authentic feel, I hand created all the elements. The background was old paper that I had collected that I soaked with some extra roast Maxwell House coffee and then I let it dry out side, picking up dust and dirt that would blow onto it from the slight breeze. I then did a couple of pages of color wash using really watered down gouache and watercolors. Once the paper had dried I tore strips out and scanned them at a extreme high res.

For the deer, I illustrated them and inked them at first using a brush but found the line weight was a little too shaky. After a few attempts, I finally switched to using calligraphy pens nibs.

After I scanned all the images, I went through my record collection and spent time deconstructing the old layouts, making sure to get the relationship between the graphic and the typography just right and how they relate to each other and to the space of 12x12.

I really am pleased with how this all came together and is one of my favorite pieces that I have done recently.

>K.