Category: Anatomy of….
VIKING Volume 1 cover
in all good comic shops and bookstores is the massively oversized hardcover of the first season of VIKING, collecting the first 5 issues of the comics series by Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein. Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been involved with the series from the word go as the logo and cover designer, so when the time came to work on the collection, the 3 of us stuck our heads together to see how we could push the design of the book a bit further after the initial waves it made in the industry — with the design and format of the single issues — and create a package for the book that would stand out on the shelves.
A lot of people have asked why we changed the VIKING logo. The logo worked well on the single issues, so if it ain’t broke, why fix it? There were a few good reasons why I decided to change the logo and the overall look of the cover, which I’ll explain below.
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Back in February I received and email from David Rondel Cambou, a good friend of mine who runs the Paris-based design agency Hellohikimori, telling me HKI were working on a project for Diesel. David and his team were assembling a list of artists and designers they were hoping to commission and asked if I could participate.
The project turned out to be an online art installation as part of the advertising campaign for Diesel’s new fragrance Only The Brave.
The concept consisted of virtual rooms where the invited designers interpreted the concept behind the fragrance — “Do you have what it takes?” — that is key to the product and the campaign. After working out a schedule I committed to the 2nd wave of the site, to be launched in June.
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In February last year one of the art directors at Wired Magazine got in touch, offering me the opportunity to work on the cover feature for an upcoming issue. The feature would focus on the human brain, and they wanted me to provide a set of 5-8 illustrations (including the opening spread), visualizing mini essays in the article. Cool! I’ve always held Wired in high esteem, fondly remembering their groundbreaking magazine designs in the 90s, and wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to a) work with them, and b) as a result have my work seen by a lot of people (I think they have a circulation of 500K/month).
The only problem was that it was due at the end of March, which meant I needed to work during my wedding holiday in Malaysia! Never one to shy away from a challenge, I gladly accepted the project…
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Late last year I completed a nice identity project for Volta, a Canadian-based visual development studio (which means they create concept art and IP for the games and entertainment industries).
A relatively young company, Volta already boasts an impressive client list and is doing some amazing work for the games industry, all they lacked was a coherent company identity. And that’s where I came in.
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Thanks everyone for suggesting topics! Very much appreciated. Some interesting (and unexpected) requests for Anatomy Of… subjects. I’ll start with the one that got the most “votes”: my own logo.
I launched this site in 2003, primarily to separate the client work from my more experimental projects.
To do so, I felt that I should put my own name to it instead of coming up with another obscure word, like ximeraLabs, as a domain name. I found out that muller.com was already taken, and not wanting to settle for anything less than a .com domain I realized I was forced to tack something on to “Muller” to be able to grab a suitable .com domain…
After some brainstorming I settled on hellomuller.com — I used to answer the phone like that (“Hello, Muller (speaking)”), so it sounded natural and above all, it was easy to remember. Right. Now that the name and domain were taken care of, it was time to focus my attention to designing a logo.
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This April, Image Comics will release a new comic series by my pal Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein called Viking.
In 2007, not too long after 24SEVEN #2 was released (for which I had done design work) Ivan asked me if i was interested in designing the logo for a comic pitch he was developing called Viking.
Ivan didn’t give any specifics, other than that it needed to be modern and bold. Not your typical Norse heraldic designs you’d associate with the culture. Since it was early days, all I had to go on was Ivan’s direction.
My first instinct was to go and look at the Runic alphabet to look for stylistic characteristics. I thought that even though the book needs a contemporary logo, it never hurts to have some sort fo visual key to the time period its based in.
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In my previous post about CBT I talked about the process of creating the logo(s) and covers for the book. With that aspect of the project finished, we felt fairly confident that we were on the right track, and that there was a solid visual basis established to design the rest of the book.
I remember it was around March — Liz and I were in Kuala Lumpur to celebrate our recent wedding with her family — when I got an email from Rantz Hoseley (the fearless editor, remember?): it turned out the printers had miscalculated their initial production timeline. When the project started they had told us multiple times that they needed to go to print at the end of May, to make the July deadline of having the book on the shelves. Now it turned out they actually meant mid-April. WONDERFUL (and we still didn’t have the art for the book)! Luckily Rantz and the guys at Image managed to squeeze some extra time out of the printers which gave us until the end of April to get everything ready. Not great, but it gave us some breathing room.
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July saw the release Comic Book Tattoo, a 500 page graphic novel anthology inspired by the lyrics of Tori Amos and published by Image Comics. The book was released in 3 editions (softcover, hardcover and a limited edition signed and numbered by Tori) and was lauched at the annual San Diego Comic-Con. The book was a huge hit and so far has sold really well, and a 4th “special” edition will be released in time for the winter holidays.
Back in January (or was it late December ’07) Rantz Hoseley (the editor of the book) got in touch with me to ask if I’d be interested to design the book and the advertising collateral. Rantz is a guy who has been involved in the comic and video game industry for over 20 years, and one of Tori’s best friends (for the trivia freaks among you: Rantz introduced Neil Gaiman to Tori, and inspired her to write Flying Dutchman).
Of course it was pretty much a no-brainer and I said yes immediately.
This would be a perfect job for Mr & Mrs M!
From the start we were up against a hard deadline: To make the most of the book, it had to be launched at Comic-Con (end of July traditionally) — the biggest event in the industry, supported by an aggressive press campaign. This meant that everything needed to be at the printers by early May to make that date. Rantz had a very clear vision of what he wanted the book to be: not “just” a comic anthology, but a coffee table style book that appeals as much to fans of comics, Tori, and music/media in general.
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I recently completed a poster redesign for Logan’s Run, as part of the Now Showing exhibit curated by Darren Firth/Wear It With Pride and on display at the Cosh gallery in London until the 16th of June 2008.
When Darren invited me to participate I immediately chose Logan’s Run. It’s one of my favourite science fiction movies and a prime example of the dystopian theme in SF movies that were so typical of the 70s – think of Westworld, Silent Running, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes, THX 1138, etc…
Logan’s Run stood out to me, because while it presents a grim future, its also sexy, camp, and very stylized in terms of production design and presenting the future. As an aside – I’ve always felt, and still do, that The Future looks more alien in films from that decade, than, lets say, Minority Report. Back then it seemed they really tried to come up with visuals that were really *out there*, never mind if they were actually feasible, as opposed to the current trend in SF (in movies at least) where they try to make it all believable – resulting in visions that still impress, but they don’t look alien to us.
Logan’s Run 1 sheet, 1976
Anyway, back to Logan’s Run. What was I going to do? The original 1976 one sheet is a classic and so synonymous with the film that I wanted to avoid any similarities with it. Instead of presenting the typical collage shot of the movie, I wanted to pair it down to the single element that ran through the movie: the life clock.
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Yes, after a long hiatus I present you with another “Anatomy of..” post. This time I’ll talk about a new book Liz & I designed for Mam Tor™ Publishing: St. Cyborg’s by Nick Wray.
St. Cyborg’s is a collection of short SF stories, all centering around the titular institution. The title, to me at least, implied something of a catholic boys school and I started thinking along the lines of using an iconic image based on religious symbolism but with a contemporary/Sci-Fi slant.