0Posted by Nate Ludens on September 26, 2010 at 12:10 am
I had a wonderful summer behind the camera, friends. I thought I’d use this blog to show you my favorite photos from Summer, 2010, starting with this post.
Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas kicked off their Party On The Rocks Concert Series on May 22, and kicked a dent in the Las Vegas Concert Scene at the same time. These shows are fun as hell. They’re so diverse, sometimes you have to google who they are – but rest assured, none are a disappointment.
I was blown away by Robert Cray and his intensity – but moreso by his legendary techniques. Furthermore, I instantly became a fan when I saw how much he purely enjoyed his time on stage with his guitar and his bandmates. I think these two shots capture Mr. Cray’s intensity and his passion for wonderfully piercing bluesy guitar riffs.
Its kind of funny to me that there’s a genre on wikipedia (yeah, I know, it’s wikipedia) called Folk/Punk. The author credits the great Pogues as founders. I credit Bob Dylan, probably, for kick-starting this genre, if it really does exist. You could argue that its origins are within blues or even southern rock – but I always tend to lean toward the great Joe Strummer. The Clash were legends: punk as hell – brutally honest, smart and snide social commentary, no doubt. But it’s Strummer’s late work that really turns up the passion and the wisdom. His worldliness shines in the Hellcat Records discography. Go get these records immediately.
But get this album, too. I stumbled upon Frank Turner’s music recently while researching The Revival Tour, a group of veteran punks that just plain kick some acoustic ass. Same vigor, same angst, but acoustic. Epic story tellers, I gotta say. Turner is bold and grouchy, but insightful and often times gutwrenchingly beautiful, too. I purchased The First Three Years from iTunes almost immediately after stumbling upon Turners MySpace page and listening to all of the sample tunes there. 24 solid, soulful tunes for 8 bucks. Thank me later.
Tonight I had some fun playing with a logo redesign for a band. Good friends, Slow To Surface called last week to see if I could help with a shirt design based on their recent album, The Reason We Do This. (Available on iTunes- pick it up, you won’t be sorry). I designed the CD last spring for the band – see below. (For the record, I like their current logo, but it could use a little more “edge” to match their new style, in my opinion).
Here’s a sped-up version of the process. The first thing I did was (duh) put on the album. Then I started to search through my database of fonts from recent projects. Probably about 375 selections. Most are completely incompatible… but I narrow it down to a typeface that conveys their style of music – I settled on Dirty & Classic by one of my favorite artists and fontographers, Billy Argel. I tweaked it until it was easier to read at a smaller size (from a distance, in this particular application), but still gets across the “vibe” I was going for.
Check out this video I made using Jing (killer app!) and let me know what you think. Starts out a little slow (no pun intended).
