I was asked by my good friends in the band Mountains of Blow (formerly of the short-lived Exoneration, and east-coast hardcore bands Moment of Youth and Shitfit) to create a piece of artwork for their upcoming as-yet untitled record. They also asked for something akin to a logo, that could be used on t-shirts. A pretty open-ended request which can make this kind of thing extremely hard to pin down.

I tend to draw hands a lot and this isn’t any different, in fact it’s based off a stream-of-consciousness doodle in an old sketchbook. I tried to make it kind of crude and eroded and not so streamlined and graphic, taking inspiration from American hardcore DIY design which is itself made using a lot of found imagery. It’s supposed to look like an illustration lifted from an old spiritual volume, or the Mysteries of the Unknown series by Time-Life Books (Cosmic Duality? Powers of Healing?). Kind of ambiguous and subversively positive, some next-level perception of the energies that connect us and how powerful those connections really are. But without the creepy ambiguously-christian couple handing it to you outside a random college town dive bar.

(More to come as this project develops…) ◊

Select pieces created for MTV Networks Creative Services:

A couple flyers I did back when I lived in the Washington D.C. area for local punk shows, utilizing hand-drawn typography. ◊

Project Title:
5ive – Hesperus T-Shirt

Project Type:
T-Shirt, Illustration

Cliend Name:
Tortuga Recordings / Hydra Head Records

Year of Completion:
2008

Rationale Behind Project’s Execution:
I was approached to design a shirt for the experimental stoner-metal band 5ive (not to be confused with the British boy band of the same name), to accompany their 2008 album Hesperus. The inspiration and themes for Hesperus were drawn from the band’s time spent in Cape Cod, MA, represented by the stark nautical photography and Art Nouveau type used throughout the album artwork. For this t-shirt design I decided to take the concept in a different direction; with Hesperus being the name of a sunken ship immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous 1842 poem, I imagined the album title dredged up from the bottom of the ocean, warped and eroded by years of neglect and exposure to salt water, and host to a colony of barnacles.

Production Method, Material or Process of Development:
Unsatisfied with the original typeface utilized on the album, I recreated my own version from scratch in Adobe Illustrator to allow for better manipulation. Each letter was distorted and overlapped in an intentionally asymmetrical fashion, creating a haphazard and unconventional visual rhythm. Texture in the form of barnacles and seaweed were added in Photoshop, using online photography and encyclopedia sources as reference. Additional art and print production was assisted by James O’Mara of Hydra Head Records.

Artist/Designer(s) Involved:
Benjamin White, James O’Mara

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