On Sunday, July 21 at 3pm the legendary CLASSIXX will headline with local DJ duo Peace In Noise opening up the party. Working Not Working Members can get a 20% discount. This next party will sell out so get your tickets and stay up to date with Wish You Were Here news on Instagram.
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Public Library On Constructing the Visual Landscape for Local Natives' Album "Violet Street"
“There is so much heart, pain, and joy that the artists go through to create these records; we owe it to them to deliver a pure expression that holds up to what they have spent years agonizing over. Being able to translate what they hear in their heads to what they see on the cover is such an incredible undertaking, and results in a lot of our favorite work.”
Read MoreBranding the 2019 Spice Girls Tour with Studio Moross
Since January when the call first came in, WNW Member Kate Moross has been leading Studio Moross on their biggest undertaking and most high-profile project to date: branding the Spice Girls’ Spice World 2019 Tour. It’s the first time the Spice Girls have shared the stage in 7 years, and the studio does a spectacular job of referencing the power of nostalgia that the Spice Girls represent while also establishing the work in a modern context.
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Work With Frank Ockenfels 3
Work With is a new video series that introduces you to the creatives behind the work. Here, we visit legendary photographer Frank Ockenfels 3, who has spent nearly three decades shooting musicians, celebrities, and everyday people.
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Jessica Severn on Ariana Grande, Scooter Braun, and the World of Design in Music & Entertainment
The art director & lead designer at Scooter Braun’s SB Projects talsk about different approaches working on Ariana Grande’s past albums versus her latest, thank u, next, and what her primary goal is in visualizing the singular message of an artist’s music.
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Illustration by Allison Filice
A Mixtape from Allison Filice for the Journey Inward
“I encourage you to journey inward this winter. Set a course for what you want this year before the hustle and bustle takes you for a ride of its own. Spend some time alone journaling, reading, listening to music, or meditating.”
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Gundi Studios Celebrates Desi Women from the Motherland, Diaspora, & Beyond
Natasha Sumant is a young designer hell-bent on correcting the representation of South Asian women in fashion, editorial, media, and beyond. In 2014, she started Gundi Studios, which aims to inspire and educate her audience on issues related to feminism and navigating the world as a South Asian woman.
Read MoreAlasdair & Jock Peel Back the Glass Onion for The White Album’s 50th Anniversary
London-based Animator and Director team Alasdair Brotherston and Jock Mooney share how they brought Richard Hamilton’s White Album collage to life, what it was like collaborating with Apple and Universal, and who their respective favorite Beatle is.
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A Mixtape from Allison Filice for Transmitting Your Creative Beacon
“What we should focus on is understanding who we truly are, what our unique message is, and creating our beacon that we transmit out into the world so that other people can find us. Our beacons are our illustrations, our blogs, our paintings, our photographs, our sketches, our videos.”
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Composer Robert Miller On "The King," Voicing a Thesis, & the Value of Empathy
Robert Miller is a prolific, award-winning composer of music for film, television and the concert hall, with a career spanning more than 20 years. We discuss the particular challenges of composing for a film that's already packed with Elvis songs, and why when crafting the score, Robert tuned his ear to the thesis of director Eugene Jarecki rather than the sounds of The King himself. Robert also offers a trove of insights into his musical process as well as advice for up-and-coming composers.
Read MoreFilip Peraic Sets the Stage for Leon Bridges' New LP
Filip Peraic discusses his collaboration with Leon Bridges and Columbia Records, how he thinks his artwork effectively sets the stage for Bridges' new sound, and which musicians he'd love to design artwork for next.
Read MoreSXSW Storytellers Lounge: Recap
We partnered with RYOT Studios to bring together some cool people from an array of industries in a relaxed environment filled with good conversation. The afternoon event was held at Javelina Bar.
Read MoreComposer Adam Miele Talks Scores, Jingles, & the Musical Grind
Adam Miele has produced Grammy-nominated albums, written commercial "jingles by the pound," recorded personal projects, and founded his own music production house called Bear Studios. "There’s a great satisfaction that comes when someone is willing to compensate you for your creative efforts."
Read MoreThis Artist Visualizes Our Universe's Most Abstract Mysteries
"I’m really interested in astronomy, quantum physics, psychology, and philosophy. They’re different approaches in search of the same answers." WNW Member Allison Filice is doing her part to add illustration to the list with her latest project. Titled "Strange Universe", Allison's undertaking involves visualizing the most mysterious concepts of how our universe operates. Each illustration captures both the incredible balancing act of these concepts and the hallucinatory depth required to even wrap our minds around them.
Read MoreDarren Oorloff Makes Album Art Melting in Nostalgic Futurism
Darren Oorloff Makes Album Art
Melting in Nostalgic Futurism
MIKE O'DONNELL / EDITOR
"Those flamingoes are out of control!" "Look at this! Are you fucking kidding me?!" "I can't stop looking! Is this Pink Floyd or from the future?" When WNW HQ first came across WNW Member and Designer Darren Oorloff's album covers, there was a fair amount of wonderment, disbelief, and profanity in the volley of our responses. So we decided to interview Darren to find out some of the secrets to his approach, his influences, and what's next. While we might describe the common thread through Darren's work as "super-awesomeness," Darren helps us find some more descriptive words: "I’ve carefully curated my art to create an illusion of consistency – largely through similar colours and type treatments – but look closer and you’ll notice the only real links between the content are a sense of nostalgic futurism."
Darren also opens up about the trend in music toward designs that challenge the boundaries of the music's genre, as well as the necessity of creative tension to open a greater dialogue. "I don’t think new trends catch on in a creative field unless there is a sense of tension, perhaps a conflict – people need to disagree in order to create a conversation that will propel the trends’ reach." Here's to Darren's portfolio and music design continuing to surprise and provoke.
Tell us a little bit about your creative background. Who is Darren Oorloff and how did he get here?
My name is Darren Oorloff and I’m an Art Director from Melbourne. More specifically I create identity, packaging and artwork for the music industry.
How would you describe your creative style? Do you recognize a signature style that links all of your projects, or do you try to excuse yourself and approach each project as its own entity?
Committing to one particular style has been difficult for me. I think it’s important to establish a distinct identity as an artist, but this has a tendency to limit one’s skillset. As soon as I’ve mastered a style or a technique, I’m no longer interested in it and need to move onto something more complex. I’ve carefully curated my art to create an illusion of consistency – largely through similar colours and type treatments – but look closer and you’ll notice the only real links between the content are a sense of nostalgic futurism.
What do you see as the turning point in your creative career and development so far?
The biggest turning point for me was when my approach to design changed from ‘how do I make this?’ to ‘how do I make this look good?’ Prior to this, the physical execution of a concept was my biggest challenge – stitching multiple images together to create realistic compositions. Nowadays I have a pretty versatile set of skills and access to excellent resources where I lack, so my focus has shifted to creating beautiful compositions without the restrictions of technical incapacity.
Can you give us a little insight into your process for designing album and concert artwork? Do you try to only allow the music itself to influence your visual response, or do you also draw inspiration from whatever you’re into at the moment?
Surprisingly the music isn’t my primary influence. I’ve found a lot of artists have a carefully crafted image that doesn’t necessarily align with their sound. In my initial steps, I identify how the artist wants to be perceived. Then, I find a middle ground between what inspires me and what is applicable to the artist’s image and branding.
Do you find that it’s easier to create album artwork if you’re a fan of the music, or does it not really make a difference in your approach?
I don’t believe it makes a great difference. I try to remain fairly objective and open-minded about every project. You would think the quality of work would be much better if I was a fan of the genre and had an understanding of the history. However, some of the most creative and influential art is born of contrasting design style with genre. There is a strange movement happening right now where rappers are using a ‘metal’ aesthetic, the metal-heads are taking influence from the ‘electronic’ aesthetic and all the genres are swapping styles.
Which of your projects are you proudest of and why?
The project that garnered the most attention was for a Japanese heavy metal band called Crossfaith. This is a perfect example of a strange genre crossover as mentioned above. Crossfaith has some electronic influence in their otherwise heavy sound, so we decided to go all out on a sci-fi, almost Vapourware aesthetic. The biggest challenge here was to introduce aggression into a typically vibrant, fun style (Vapourware) and I think there’s a very fine line in the sci-fi spectrum between being cool and being nerdy. Anyway, I think I managed to navigate all of this gracefully with this particular artwork and the response was just manic.
What would be your dream project?
I’d love to work on some kind of elaborate stage/set design with immersive projection mapping. I’m also totally fascinated by VR and augmented reality, so it’d be nice to get involved in something within that realm.
Who are some of your biggest creative influences?
Shusei Nagaoka
Doug Johnson
Hajime Sorayama
Roslaw Szaybo
Tadao Ando (Architect)
Jiro Ono (Chef)
What are your favorite album covers of all time and why?
My parents had a couple of Vangelis CDs and as a child they had the most intriguing covers, depicting strange sci-fi worlds.
I am completely bamboozled about how Doug Johnson created this series. His airbrushing skills and use of colour make me sweat.
In my opinion Neil Krug’s best work to-date. He captures so much momentum and drama in a still image.
Released this year, this is probably the most perfectly executed example of a crossover of metal design on a rap cover.
How would you describe the creative scene in Melbourne? Do you thrive off of being part of a creative community or are you more in your element as a lone wolf?
Melbourne has a very vibrant, ever-evolving creative scene. I particularly love this place because it’s young and still establishing its own identity as a creative city.
I surround myself with creatives every day for inspiration. However, up until now, I’ve designed solo, on account of having a very specific vision for developing my identity. Today, having established that style/aesthetic, I’d be open to collaboration with other artists where my technical abilities lack.
What do you do when Not Working?
I’ll try to get a skate in when there's time, and sun.
I also like to go for a run – I feel like I’m problem-solving 24/7 because I don’t – and can’t – apply a consistent method to each project. Running gives me an hour each day to focus on nothing, and to give me a break from that persistent problem-solving.
What’s some of the best creative advice you’ve ever heard or received that our members need to hear?
Ken Robinson said something that floored me in a talk about schools killing creativity: “If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original”
This isn’t something I’d ever considered. I feel like I’ve taken risks, but they’ve all been calculated risks. I don’t think new trends catch on in a creative field unless there is a sense of tension, perhaps a conflict – people need to disagree in order to create a conversation that will propel the trends’ reach.
Who are some WNW Members whose work you admire and why?
I’ve always been a fan of Anny Wang, her 3D game is on another level.
Discover more creative talent and projects like this on Working Not Working. If you're a WNW Member with new work, exhibits, products, or news to share, email us.
Mixtape: Album Cover Maestro & Guest DJ Michael Carney
Earlier this week, we featured WNW Member Michael Carney and his design work with The Black Keys and a range of other artists both classic and contemporary. Given his work in the music industry, we figured we'd hit him up for a list of albums we should go check out immediately. Below, we present some songs from those albums, in no particular order. There are some Black Keys tunes off of their LP Brothers and EP Chulahoma, two of the many albums whose covers showcase Carney's craft. There's also some Captain Beefheart that's more washed in blues than acid, some avant-garde Eno, as well as an offering of The Cramps, Serge Gainsbourg, and everything in between.
Read MorePhoto by Laura Carney
Meet the Grammy-Winning Creative Director of The Black Keys
You've undoubtedly encountered his album artwork for some of rock music's most notable acts, both classic and contemporary. We talk to Carney below about his creative journey from his background in Akron to his current design practice in Nashville. He gives us a behind-the-scenes look at his early start designing album covers, posters, t-shirts, and flyers for his brother Patrick's band The Black Keys, and how that culminated in a Grammy for his work on their 2011 album Brothers.
Read MoreGo Backstage with the Collected Works’ Governors Ball Branding
Go Backstage with the Collected Works’ Governors Ball Branding
MIKE O'DONNELL / EDITOR
The Collected Works has been on a roll lately. The NY-based graphic design studio, consisting of WNW Members Justin Colt and Jose Fresneda, keeps propelling itself forward with a range of diverse projects from album packaging for a Grateful Dead celebration to visualizing the internet for a sleek new router. Their latest undertaking was creating the entire identity and branding for this year's Governors Ball. As we said, they're on a roll.
This isn't the studio's first foray into designing an identity for a big event. Last year, they cut their teeth on The Meadows, another music festival in New York. They also helped Working Not Working with the identity and visuals for their 5th Birthday Party in January, which one attendee called "the single greatest event of the decade." Anyways, below we talk to Justin and Jose about their process and mission for designing the Governors Ball as the event to kick off summer in New York. They also share some insights into the learning curve that came with 3D modeling and animation, and tell us what it was like actually attending the event as VIPs and seeing their work in action.
How did you come to create the branding and identity for this year’s Governors Ball?
A year earlier we had worked with Founders Entertainment, the creators of Governor’s Ball on the identity and design for The Meadows, another music festival that they were putting together. It was a great partnership, and we really enjoyed working with them. This seemed to be a mutual feeling since they invited us to pitch ideas for Gov Ball after The Meadows wrapped up. We went all in on the pitch and developed a handful of concepts that we presented. They liked one of those directions quite a bit, and we were hired to develop the whole system and expand it for the festival.
What were some of your goals and inspirations for the aesthetic?
The main inspiration for the identity is summer in New York–good vibes, a positive atmosphere and (hopefully) nice weather. Repeated festival attendees think of Governors Ball kicking off the start of summer in the city, and the identity should have this same excitement. So, we already knew that we wanted a bright and vibrant color palette and overall energetic attitude.
The other aspect that makes Gov Ball special is that it’s a festival made by New Yorkers for New Yorkers. It’s deeply rooted in NYC, and we saw a great opportunity to use icons of the city to build the identity system. It should feel born and raised in New York.
What was the hardest part of nailing down the identity?
Taking a dive into 3D modeling and animation was a big learning curve. We had a great designer, Ben Ross, working here at the studio, who taught us all a ton about Cinema 4D and how to model all these objects. One of the hardest parts was creating a consistent set of 3D models, that would work together as a unified set. For instance, many of these items were created from scratch, here at the studio. However, for the gigantic Manhattan 3D model, we had to find a pre-existing map that we could customize–as creating this from scratch would take forever. Then, we had to ensure all these different objects (ones we modeled here, and ones we had to source) all felt like they matched and belonged together.
The other bottleneck was the amount of time needed to render everything. We had built a custom PC to handle the workload, which was pretty efficient at still frames, but took a ton of time for animation. For instance, 1 second of video would take about an hour to render. So a 60-second animation took days to render, which created some time crunches.
Once everything was actually modeled and rendered it was pretty smooth sailing. We essentially had a massive toolkit of all these objects, which we could keep pulling from and reusing.
How did creating a festival identity differ from creating one for a company?
From a conceptual standpoint, we approach both types of projects in the same way. One thing that we always push when working on identity design is the importance of thinking about the greater system that has to be in place, rather than just the individual pieces. The poster, website, tickets, signage, animations and stage design all need to feel consistent–to name a few. That’s very similar to working with most clients.
However, there are a ton of politics when dealing with artists. For a better part of the process, we don’t even know who’s going to be performing at the festival that year. Then, when the lineup is figured out, there are a bunch of contractual obligations we need to follow. The order of artists, when we can announce they are booked, the size of the artists' names, the color of the artists' names; all of these are things that artist managers dictate long in advance, and will need to sign off on. So, it all becomes a sort of jigsaw puzzle, to satisfy these obligations but still have everything feel well designed. You’ll see a lot of ugly festival posters, and this is usually the reason why–because there are hundreds of cooks in the kitchen, and everyone wants their aesthetic preferences to come through, and their artist to have top billing. I guess that’s show business for you.
How did it feel seeing the fruits of your labor all over the festival?
We’ve been very lucky as a studio, to work with clients we sincerely appreciate and respect. It feels incredibly exciting to be involved with a project that we have a vested interest in and, in this case, a festival we would have paid money to attend even if we didn’t work on.
A few highlights are seeing our design work all around the city–some posters are wheat-pasted across the street from the studio right now for instance. It’s also rad to see artists and their fans sharing the work on social media, and everyone feeling sincerely excited about the event. Finally, being at the festival itself is especially awesome. The design system really comes together at that point, and all these dozens of elements (screens, tickets, signs, apparel, stickers, tattoos, sculptures, geofilters, stages) create an incredibly consistent and strong system and experience.
Who were some of your favorite acts at the festival? Did you get a VIP experience?
Let’s see, some of our personal favorites were Chance, Beach House, Francis and the Lights, Childish Gambino, Wu-Tang, Air, The Avalanches, Mac Demarco and Warpaint.
Gov Ball also hooked us all up with VIP tickets, which was the icing on the cake. It’s pretty awesome to hang backstage to see how a festival and a concert is run from that perspective–which is incredibly overwhelming. Oh, and the VIP bathrooms are pretty nice.
What’s next for you?
We have some rad projects in the pipeline that we’re excited about. We’re designing everything for The Meadows 2017, which is coming up in a few months. It’s an evolution of the identity we designed last year, and another one of our favorite projects. We just finished up the branding and design for another festival called Suwannee Hulaween, that’s happening down in Florida. We’ve also been working on the live visuals for Japanese rockstar, helping one of our favorite bands The National with their website and a bunch of animations, playing around with some VR projects, and doing a few self-initiated projects.
We might throw a big studio party in the next few months, and are trying to figure out how to brew and package a bunch of beer to give away.
Anything else you’d like to add?
Wanted to give a big thank you again to Tom, Josh and Laura at Founders Entertainment for the continued collaboration with Gov Ball and The Meadows. Another huge thanks to you, Working Not Working, for the continued opportunities you’ve connected us with. We’re huge WNW fans over here. Also thanks to Ben, Ahna, Steph and Ethan for all the Gov Ball help. Finally, we always want to connect with interesting people, so if you’re reading this and want to get in touch, hit us up!
Are you a WNW Member with new work, exhibits, products, or news to share? Email us!
ARTIST NICOLO BIANCHINO PAYS HOMAGE TO GIORGIO MORODER
ARTIST NICOLO BIANCHINO PAYS HOMAGE TO GIORGIO MORODER
WNW Member Nicolo Bianchino clearly has excellent taste in music. His latest project "Giorgio" is an ode to Italian singer, songwriter, and producer Giorgio Moroder. Nicolo's animations compliment voice-over musings by the man himself, as he discusses the discovery of his now infamous synthesizer sound. The featured music is "Giorgio by Moroder," a track by Daft Punk, who are just one of the many famous acts that Moroder has influenced.
Here's Free Range's personal favorite Giorgio Moroder song, from his soundtrack to the late-night 80s thriller Cat People: