the website for the feature film PAVILION went live today, and along with it my second blog article for the IFP in which i discuss the process that went into making the site. we were also fortunate enough to be asked to handle the film’s posters and the credit sequences. the article discusses this and explains why our treatment on all fronts aimed to reflect the very minimal, atmospheric nature of the film.

here’s an excerpt -

my co-worker zach referred me once to a film (portrait of jason, 1967) where a man is sitting there smoking a cigarette for pretty much the entire film. that’s it. talking about this on the way to get lunch one day we agreed that in a film like that, where that’s all that happens, the small things turn into huge events. zach then stopped, scratched his head and thought for a moment, whispering to the air in front of him, “what was it that happened in that one…”. i stopped too, waited, and then finally he said “ah yes, he ran out of gas on his lighter. huge deal!” we both laughed and then stepped inside jimmy’s, our regular lunch joint.

so to reiterate, pavilion really is one of those exact films. it’s almost fair to say that if you blink or cough, you could miss the entire ‘reveal’ at the end of it. there are tiny fragmented shards of dialogue that tell you what’s happening whilst all the while you’re watching the most detached, beautiful and mesmerizing footage of kids feeling out the moments in those long, long, useless days of our youth. in fact what i said when i came back from the bathroom after tim had screened his movie for us was ‘congratulations’. congratulations for capturing that feeling of the abstract, aimless ennui of what it was to be young, with almost no sense of responsibility at all.

you can read the rest of the article here.

our talk at the IFP labs in tribeca, new york yielded some unexpected but very welcome results – several film makers approached us to assist them with ways to promote their films. one of the first was writer / director and actor ryan o’nan. he was about to send his new film the brooklyn brothers beat the best to the toronto film festival. the above poster is one of a few elements we worked work him and his production team to put together for the festival.

the film is ryan’s ode to john hughes trains, planes and automobiles (and stars some classic 80s movie alumni) and we created a poster to try to reflect that whilst offering it’s own more beat-up, make-shift aesthetic. it’s the story of a lovelorn musician trying to get a band together and perhaps rekindle a little self-respect along the way. due to these musical themes within the film we also helped design a series of other elements which will be revealed by the film’s production team along the way.

this is our first proper feature film poster and we’re very excited and thankful to have been ushered into this new world by such great and talented people. speaking of which, we should also add that the film also stars ‘tappy’ from requiem for a dream, ‘kevin’ from st. elmo’s fire and ‘keoki’ from party monster. if you know who those characters are then you’ll be as stoked as we were to see it for the first time. needless to say, working with ryan and his team has been a real pleasure and a great learning experience and we’re excited to say that we are already hard at work on posters for another film. stay tuned for the fruits of those labours soon.

here’s the 2011 thomas newbolt open studio poster we just sent to the printers. it varies from the previous poster designs we’ve done for this artist, but once again allowed us to play around with some nicer typefaces.

those who know 65daysofstatic will see this shift from a world-touring, 4-piece rock band into stage and screen soundtrack composers as unsurprising. their music has always been predominantly instrumental, cinematic and tonally complex. for those of you who still haven’t listened to a 65 LP, you’re probably falling behind. in the next few years it’s highly possible that they’ll be scoring the sort of films that we’ll all be checking out at the local art cinema. not that we have some inside scoop here, but why not assume as much? all power to them.

the above poster is one of 4 differing designs we produced for the band. the aim was to give their fans a memento of the unique experience to be had up at the glasgow film festival this weekend. the poster itself it was also produced in a weekend – one that started with watching silent running in bed on a saturday morning, and ended with a very sore back, blood-shot eyes and a wry smile on the face of the designer the following sunday evening. it’s been printed A3-size with a silk-matte finish and it’s very limited edition. heck, we might not even get a copy ourselves. those great few of you who made the trek to the highlands however, we hope it’s worthy enough of the experience you’ve had.

it’s been about 4 years since we changed the way we present ourselves to people. it’s never been a huge deal to us, given we’ve never been hugely attracted to the idea of brands, fixed identities and the overall corporate approach to a company’s ‘personality’. in fact this time around we’ve dropped our previous ‘graphic’ logo, preferring instead to simply type our (v) out and produce a variation on it that echoes the kaomoji anime style emoticons, (v_i)

beyond this there are basically three key elements that governed this redesign. the first part was some kind of old library catagorization card that we found a scan of online.

for whatever reason the raw simplicity of it matched our desire to build a site that was stripped right down to the bare essentials. our portfolio was now strong enough to speak for itself, and some basic lettering on a paper surface like this made a lot of sense to us.

the second key part of the redesign came to us when designing our new business cards. our local printhouse cut us a deal for some super heavy stock letterpressed cards, so long as we limited ourselves to using one colour on one side. turning this to our advantage we created a design based on the black spot from treasure island. it tickled us to think that anyone we gave our card to might be considered guilty, or that their time for judgement has come.

the third part was this beautiful old japanese poster, again found online, that for one reason or another had haunted us. if anyone knows where we can get a copy of this poster, or even a higher resolution image of it, we’d be hugely grateful.

everything else you experience throughout the site are elements of our own creation or recreated from design blogs and experimental code projects around the internet. as stated before, the site is intended to take very much a back-seat to our work so it’s almost an exercise in harmonies rather than a lead melody of any sort.

we hope you find it non-intrusive when looking at our work, but also complimentary to the work.

big black delta’s first EP just got posted in full on their site. you can grab it right now, for free. no strings attached. this is of course excellent news as it’s a particularly stunning mixture of lush vocals, pulsing beats and far out science-fiction soundscapes.

for our part, we are continuing to ensure that it’s dressed as smartly as possible for its various voyages through the internet, off the walls and into your ears. the above, massive, glossy, film poster is the latest in a line of offerings that you can decipher whilst listening to the music. in fact there are 24″ x 36″ editions of it available right now from their website. each one signed and a steal at just $20.

bigblackdelta.com

however if you just want the FREE EP. that’s cool. no hard feelings.

after selling out of the $2 smaller editions of mellowdrone’s angry bear poster, we got together with the band and produced a limited edition, high quality, glossy, king-size run. the final edition is 24 x 37 inches in size, which is about as big as your average full size film poster. it’s not often our artwork gets printed so large, but it’s always something we’re very thankful for.

if you are in need of some fury on your walls, don’t hesitate to grab yourself an edition while stocks last -

http://mellowdrone.com/poster/

as part of our on going collaboration with the truly fantastic mellowdrone, we’ve designed a poster to support the sleeve artwork we did for their latest album, angry bear. the poster is currently available in one size only (11×17 inches) and is exclusively available from the band’s label coming home records for a mere $2. yep, that’s two dollars. so if you’re a fan, do yourself a favour – get a pint instead of that double and grab one of these puppies while stocks last.

the above, giant, 3′ x 4′ poster was available exclusively at the protomen’s act II release show last weekend in nashville, TN. we created it with the band as a thank you to fans for making the long trek, as they all did, to see the band perform both their albums back to back in thunderous, conceptual glory. version industries representatives, myself included, attended and helped make sure the performance was recorded both in HD video and with digital still photography. below is a taste of the material we gathered -

you can view the rest of the photographs we took here. you can also expect video footage of the show from us in the coming months. in the meantime check out this incredibly flattering review of the new album by nashville resident yewknee. a perfect come down to an incredible weekend with our friends in the south.

it’s a beautiful A1 (33.11 x 23.39 inches) screen print and currently only available from the band’s merch booth on tour. so check out their show dates and find yourself a copy.