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CD Jacket & Social Media for The Argyle Embargo’s Debut Album

I’m so excited to be able to share the project I’ve been working on this January! Local Vancouver band, The Argyle Embargo, released their first album last night, and took me on to do the CD and jacket design. It was one of those lightning fast projects, where I had to collaborate with the band and the photographer to get everything done in time for the release, and we all pulled together to make something awesome. I’m so happy with the experience and the final product!

They also had me do a campaign of social media images to promote the album and the show. I love the challenge of translating a look and feel across different dimensions and platforms. Here are the ones I did for Facebook, Soundcloud, and Twitter.

A huge congratulations to the Embargo on a packed show and a rocking first album! Looking forward to the next one!

 

 

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REFUGE Recap

The dust has finally settled after the July Cor Flammae concerts, and we are so pleased to have another successful summer concert series under our belts, and grateful for the artistic experience that came together.

When we chose REFUGE as a theme, it was months before the terrible events at Pulse Nightclub in Florida occurred, but rehearsing in the aftermath we were reminded of why we do what we do. Providing a space for queer singers to make art about survival, and providing a space of meditation on this experience for audiences, is not just an academic exercise but something necessary and artistically relevant to our lives. The point of art is to reflect, parse, transform and bear witness to the realities of the human experience. When people question “why queer art,” this year’s concert allowed us to answer that the queer experience needs to be heard and seen – queer art is a shelter;  one that both saves us from the world and allows us to remake it with more room for difference. In making art about the queer experience we do as we always aspire to – connect the abstract beauty of music to that vital heartbeat of human life.

On that note, this year’s programme was a special undertaking. Learning about music history brings the pieces and composers to life for me, not only letting me geek out and expand my own knowledge, but also explore my favourite challenge: how to then translate that experience to the reader. My hope is that it works in concert with the performances to allow listeners to fully engage with this music.

You can find the programme at issuu.com, and recordings of this summer’s performances at bandcamp.com and YouTube.

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Rossini’s Petite Messe Solenelle

I’m pleased as punch to have put together the spring concert poster for the Richmond Orchestra and Chorus Association and the North Shore Chorus’ spring collaboration.  They will perform two concerts of one of Rossini’s sacred works, the Petite Messe Solennelle, on March 12th and April 2nd.

RossiniPosterROCA_Web

I had a lot of fun with this one – I did a sketch of a Rossini portrait to use as my background and then scanned it in to my computer, where I changed it into a vector image in Illustrator.  I had recently got my hands on some new fonts, and I enjoyed playing with the contrast between the script font of the composer name, and the bold modernity of the title text.  I hope it references the traditional aesthetic associated with classical music, and the joyous, expressive energy that comes to mind when I think of Rossini, but with a clean, contemporary feel.

Genderfest 2014!

It’s time for this year’s Genderfest!  Genderfest is an East Van celebration of queer pride, that brings together a bunch of great events that celebrate gender diversity.  It’s a festival I really believe in and I was so pleased to be asked back this year to do the promotional graphics!

We put together a poster listing all the events, with a luscious west coast background, which I got to use my wacom tablet to draw some ferns for.  I also had a blast creating an alternate interpretation of the Genderfest unicorn logo into a simplified banner image, and update the website background to match. Expanding the web graphics side of things from last year, the Facebook banner I created lists all the events and describes the festival, in case folks want a quick cheat-sheet of what’s going on.  The really cool part of this year’s promotions is a folding business card with all of the event listings. The idea is that instead of having a bulky flyer that people toss away or tape to their fridge at home, this is something they can carry around in their wallet and open it up when they’re out on the town.

The final Genderfest event is Unicorn Born – an epic East Van dance party (19+) happening this Sunday at the Maritime Labour Centre (1880 Triumph St).  Check out the Genderfest website for Unicorn Born accessibility information.  I’ll see you there with my dancing shoes on!

 

Genderfest Campaign 2014

 

 

Malaspina Printmakers

OMG. I just discovered Malaspina Printmakers. These people are so sexy.

Essentially, they’re an artistic society based in Vancouver that focuses on the various elements of printmaking. They have all of the equipment and run workshops for a variety of print-related techniques:

…intaglio, aquatint, lithoplate, monotypes, etching, lithography, collography, inkjet [looks like some prepress and paper info], silkscreening, woodcut [!!!], intaglio photopolymer…

I don’t even know what half this stuff is, but it sounds very alluring. Next time I am feeling flush with cash I am totally rocking down and taking one of these. AND they have exhibits! I can’t wait to immerse myself in some awesome print art.