VIKING Volume 1 cover

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.

The seeds for the new logo design were sown before the series ended. Issue 4 had just been released and I was ready to start on the cover of issue 5, which would be the final issue in the current arc. Ivan wanted to signal this by adding the words ‘SEASON FINALE’ to the cover.

Cover ideas for VIKING #5

Initially I used the custom typeface to write SEASON FINALE in various forms, but I quickly discovered that the letterforms didn’t really work, and the text was overpowering the image.
At one point I wanted to redesign the ‘E’ to make it more legible, but doing that would mean replacing the ‘E’ in Nic’s last name as well — which would be a very inconsistent change to make in a last issue. As an alternative I decided on using Avant Garde, which I was using already for the issue numbering, which worked much better and contrasted nicely with the VIKING font, and with a bit of work the final cover for issue 5 was a fact.

Soon after, we started discussing the design for the hardcover collection, deciding to shift tactics in the design process. Instead of designing the cover after Nic had created the art (which brought with it certain restrictions), I would take the lead and art direct the cover from scratch, working in tandem with Nic, who would create the artwork based on the design.

The first thing on the agenda was the logo. I felt that it had run its course on the single issue covers (there’s only so many ways to tilt a logo) — it had become too rigid compared to Nic’s very dynamic and mixed media artwork. I proposed to Ivan to redesign the logo and establish a new, much more intense graphic treatment for the book, something that would thematically be a closer fit to what Nic was doing.

Initial logo explorations

My first attempts at redesigning the logo were quite subtle and were more an evolution instead of a clean break. However it was immediately clear to me that this wasn’t working, and wasn’t even close to the concept I was aiming for.

Hand-traced letters

Then, while I was doing research I stumbled across a typeface in an old issue of Avant Garde which, with modification, would be a perfect fit for VIKING. I discovered quickly that the typeface wasn’t commercially available anywhere and so I grabbed some tracing paper and traced a few of the letters I needed with a fine black marker pen while reconstructing the ones that were missing.

Assembled text with applied texture.

I assembled all the words and names, applied textures to it and ran the result a through Illustrator tracing the outlines, printing it, scanning it again and repeating the process a few times, until I got the right roughed up, photocopied look I was aiming for. Adding distorted geometric shapes to work as a framing & support device I started working on the cover design.

Initial text & framing cover concepts.

Working primarily with 100% cyan, magenta and yellow (and black) I set out to create intentionally bright designs, enforcing the traditional ’4 colour’ world of comics, but juxtaposing the colours to create high contrasts and dynamic shapes — Comics as an Electroclash Pop object.

Unused cover concept using skull art by Nic Klein.

Exchanging ideas with Nic the design for the cover started to come together. We tried incorporating B/W art in the design, but felt it was too overpowering. Midway in the design process, Ivan decided to change the name of the collection from ‘CRIME OF THE CENTURY’ to the more appropriate ‘THE LONG COLD FIRE’.
Now, with the main design finalised I created a template for Nic, who could now start on the art.

Front cover framing design.

First pass of the cover.

Nic had created a series of images — key scenes and characters from the story — to create a movie-style montage all held together by the central graphic. He had added textures to the design as well. Now that we had a good idea of where all the elements would be placed, I could start fine-tuning the design. Nic’s cover version was fairly dark so worked up the design elements and text, to make everything stand out more.

Not-so-final cover.

While we all agreed we liked this cover design, it was perhaps a bit too powerful a statement, and getting too far removed from the series. Even though the new design fitted the book, we couldn’t move away in such a drastic way that it’d be unrecognisable. We kept working on the cover, meticulously fine-tuning the design, colours and artwork until we reached the point where everything was in perfect balance.

The final cover design.

The final cover design (a bigger version can be seen on Flickr) signals both the end of the first VIKING season, while announcing what will hopefully follow in the future — when this much more dynamic and malleable design can be rolled out across the single issues.

The VIKING Vol1 hardcover ‘THE LONG COLD FIRE’ is out now in all good comic and bookshops. Alternatively, you can buy it from Amazon US or Amazon UK.

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.

One thing that attracted me to the project was that we (the invited designers) were given complete artistic freedom. While we were free to incorporate campaign visuals I decided to stay clear of them feeling that using the brand imagery would be too easy — and given the artistic carte-blanche I saw this as an excuse to use Diesel as a platform to show off my work. Of course Diesel uses my work as a platform to speak to its (no doubt painfully hip) consumer base so I guess we’re somewhat even.

When I started on the project I had recently finished work on the Omega Code poster, and found myself wanting to explore that type of “space noise” graphics (for lack of a better description) further, and felt there could be an interesting contrast between the slick fragrance campaign and abstract, glitchy visuals. It was important however to avoid the all too common trap of designing for design’s sake and create images without meaning.

While doing image research (yes, looking at NASA imagery) I realized that the epitome of “having what it takes/are you brave enough” is being an astronaut: being shot in space strapped on top of a rocket into a vacuum, only wearing a space suit, knowing that even the smallest slip-up can be fatal. I felt that using the theme of space exploration as an interpretation of the fragrance concept was really interesting (and a bit left field), and it gave me the opportunity to continue exploring the “space noise” graphics without it being superficial.

Now that I had a fully realized idea, I focussed my attention on vintage NASA audio/video footage of Apollo missions, initially looking for interesting radio crackle and more generic soundscapes to create a nondescript audio track for my room. In the meantime I drafted in my brother Tim to collaborate on the project. I felt his abstract 3D images would fit perfectly with what I had in mind, so we started to run through some tests to find the right tone of image:

Early image tests

Important, to me at least, was to capture the lo-fi graininess of vintage video and the sense of wonder when seeing strange alien vistas from space — so typical of old NASA footage. It wasn’t until I ended up at Apollo 15 footage that everything clicked into place, when I heard the the quote of Astronaut David R. Scott, Commander of the Apollo 15 Lunar Mission:

“As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there is a fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore.

And this is exploration at its greatest!”

That quote, (luckily not as well known as the famous Neil Armstrong line) synthesized perfectly what I was trying to articulate.

Check out this video on the Apollo 15 mission, scrub to 5.20 in to hear Scott utter his famous words:

After having found a proper audio transcript of the mission that I could edit it was pretty much plain sailing: Tim created a series of abstract space images which I edited together in after effects, adding HUD graphics (which, incidentally, are taken from Apollo mission checklist documents), glitches and the audio to create a 35 second video loop for our room on the Diesel site which we apply named Man Must Explore:

Check out the full room on the Only The Brave site, and you can check out hi-res image stills on Flickr.

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…


The images that landed me the Wired gig: The Oneironaut (L), and a Inphra for DV (R).

The reason they asked me was because they had seen some of my image work (I hesitate to call it illustration myself) and wanted “that style” to illustrate the various abstract concepts in the article.

— On a side note, based on the screen grabs they enclosed (“These are images of yours we like!”) I’m pretty certain they didn’t go further than the homepage of my site to check out my portfolio. Lesson learned: always put your best stuff face front.

Anyway, they had a very specific idea for the feature and the layout. The cover story was titled “Get Smarter” and had actor Steve Carell (in what was no doubt a PR tie-in with his Get Smart movie) with a weird brain helmet. What I needed to do, for starters, was to enhance the photo (taken by Brent Humphreys), creating the effect that electricity/energy was kind of crackling around his head. They had even included a handy mock up to show me what they meant:

Design mock up from Wired

With that knowledge in mind I set out creating the image. Even though the Wired team had made it clear they liked the blue/red colours from my older work, I tried to steer away just a bit from that (no sense in doing the same thing twice!) and went for a more purple/blue & green tone for the graphics. However since time was of the essence I couldn’t create every single asset from scratch… Luckily I rarely delete anything and I’ve built up a pretty large image/digital asset library over the years of unfinished/unused/might-use material that I can re-use and remix into new imagery (kind of like Lego) layer by layer:

Gif animation showing how the opening spread image is built up

The image is built up of approximately 45-50 layers on top of the photo of Carell — I didn’t have a hi-res photo to work with, so I had to make sure my image blended over the photo without interfering with it too much, and that I could easily swap in the final Carell picture later. For those of you interested in the more “technical aspects” of creating the image: I didn’t use any special settings, custom brushes or fancy effects (just your standard blur and transform tools) — unlike Tim at Assault, who went out of his way trying to recreate the effect step-by-step.

Detail of the opening image

With a visual style set for the article, and the opening spread image approved I could move on to the remaining 4 spreads. The Wired team sent me some more rough page layouts so I knew where the image would be most visible (page content would be layered on top of them). I thought it would be interesting to create a sort of theme running through the pages, and so I tried extracting the rest of the images from the opening spread…

Article spread mock up from Wired

The first topic I had to illustrate was “Black hole” and thus required some black hole-ish visual, some vortex kind of thing.
I took elements from my opening spread image and started reworking them to create the required effect, but it looked too obvious that it was basically the same image — and it felt more like a swirling mass of energy than a black hole; even though I do like the result!

First attempt at creating a black hole

I refined the swirls and desaturated most of the image, then adding blue hues to it to create a much more pleasing and more appropriate result.

The final image and how it appears in the article.

Throughout the project I was, of course, in constant contact with the Wired creative team in New York getting feedback and always slightly tweaking the images as they worked on finalizing the page layouts of the feature, with sometimes last minute changes to the images. This creates interesting situations (to me at least) where you have a “final” image that for all intents and purposes ticks all the boxes, and in the end just doesn’t fit with what the editorial and/or creative department have in mind. But that’s all part of the process of editorial design: creating and fine-tuning that one image that captures the gist of an article. On the upside I end up with a lot of new material to add to my image library!

“Don’t Panic” image from concept, to colour change and how it got published.

As the deadline was nearing my wife and I had already been in Malaysia for a week, and I spent whatever free time I had finishing up the images and FTP-ing them one by one to Wired — then getting feedback, tweaking the images, re-uploading etc. The usual.
As luck would have it of course, a major thunderstorm had knocked down some power lines and cut off internet access for the entire neighbourhood where we stayed. So I ended up the last two days at a Starbucks in the local mall abusing their painfully slow free wifi. Uploading a 25MB zip file has never taken so long (2 grande Latté’s, a slice of cake, and a stroll through Borders). And if that wasn’t enough, at the same time I was also doing preliminary logo designs for Comic Book Tattoo!

Another image that went through revisions before being published

Anyway, it all worked out in the end of course. I managed to send all the images to Wired before the deadline, and was pleased to see the final result when I received my comp copies of the issue 2 months later, which you can see here and on Flickr.

I was contacted by Volta’s executive producer and CEO to discuss the project. They had been following my work for a few years (especially the work I’ve been doing with Mam Tor and for Ashley Wood), and wanted me to help them find their voice. They had a few keywords and points that needed to be ticked, but it became clear from the start that we were all on the same wavelength concerning the look of the logo. In addition I was also asked to design a range of business cards for the core team at Volta.

The first thing that struck me looking at the name — Volta — was the “Volt” part, which implied electricity, which implies power, energy and dynamics. Incidentally, the inventor of the electric battery is called Alessandro Volta. Looked like I was going in the right direction!

First round of designs

With my initial designs I went for a very robust custom type design. I wasn’t sure yet about upper or lowercase letters, and tried a mix of both, and added thick slabs on the V and A. In general I liked the design of the letters but it was far from perfect, and the negative space between the letters didn’t work well.

Second round of designs

As an alternative option, I designed a very blocked, square logo mark, much more constructivist in nature, with some subtle hints towards gaming. Everyone agreed that this approach was too blunt. We all preferred the first designs, so I went back and started fine tuning those.

My Fed-Ex moment

Still looking for a visual hook in the logo — I was hoping to somehow add a symbol or shape akin to lightning or electricity — I hit my “FedEx” moment (for those who don’t know what I mean by that, take a really good look at that logo). By setting the L and T closer together and switching the angle on the foot of the L, the negative space created a simplified lightning bolt. Exactly what I was looking for!
Now that I had my visual hook, it was a matter of balancing out the rest of the word mark: I turned the slabs of the V and A in on themselves, in the process creating the bridge in the A and flipped over (for the V) it created a nice reversed slab.

The final Volta word mark and the iconic mark

Additionally I designed a logo ligature, by combining the V and A, creating a logo icon that Volta can use to support the main mark. A nice bonus is that the VA mark is also turns out to be an ambigram.

Now that the logo was designed (and approved, of course), I could start on the second part of the project: the business cards. Volta had sent me a selection of their artwork at the start of the project to give me an overview of what they do, and that had given me an idea for their identity.

Concept painting for Criminal (Midway Games). Image © Volta Creations.

To create the identity, I felt that — especially for a creative company — that it was important that it somehow showed their actual work. For the cards then, I thought, it could be nice to use isolated elements from their digital paintings, creating a set of art card, each different and showing different styles and moods: soft, hard, warm, cold, techno, organic, etc,…

Initial tests to see how masking out the textures might work

One thing however, was that Volta work almost exclusively in low resolution, so the chances of getting print-resolution artwork was pretty much out of the question. But that actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. By being forced to “blow up” the artwork (I only wanted to show details) the images became slightly fuzzy and you could clearly make out the pixels. This reinforced the whole screen-based work flow of the company, and added an extra texture to the already rough brush strokes — although I had to convince the printer that it was indeed the desired look and not an oversight!

Detail of a card

For the card design I applied the VA symbol to the art side, knocked out in white, with the full logo at the same position on the back in black. The design of the back is set in 3 weights of Univers: 67 Bold Condensed, 57 Condensed, and 47 Condensed Light — creating a rigid system to display contact information that doesn’t overpower the logo.

The finished cards

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.

I like to see myself as a fairly Modernist designer, so I felt it was important that whatever logo I’d design was something that was primarily functional, but also timeless and in a sense neutral, not a faddish design. I wanted to be able to look at whatever I would design in 20 years time and have it still be relevant. Simultaneously I wanted to create a brand, a label of some sorts that I could use to “sign” my work with.

L-R: Knoll logo, Herman Muller logo, Herman Miller logo

Instinctively I looked at logos and “brands” that I felt comfortable with, logos I was familiar with from a young age (with my dad being an interior designer and having tons of catalogues) — most notably the Knoll logo designed by Massimo Vignelli and the Herman Miller mark designed by George Nelson Associates. Additionally I looked at my dad’s own logo he designed in the early 70s. Aside from the fact that all 3 logos represented furniture design, they all have a Modernist qualities I was looking for, an iconic simplicity that still looks relevant today. Most importantly, I wanted to continue the tradition of those logos and I decided to design a word mark, rather than an icon or abstract symbol. I had already designed an iconic logo for ximeraLabs and wanted to create some distance between that and my new portfolio… even though I was initially still hung up on a graphic device to contain the mark.

First impressions

I started out with some basic attempts of how the logo would sit — was hellomuller going to be one word or split?
I was in two minds about it because even though it was my domain, I preferred the logo to just say “Muller” instead (of course, now everyone knows me as hellomuller! Ah well… I’m not complaining)… I switched from Helvetica (the default Modernist choice) to my personal favourite, Akzidenz Grotesk (the other default Modernist choice).
I’ve always preferred Akzidenz above Helvetica, it has just that little bit of extra character going for it in my opinion (but I still have much love for Helvetica of course).

helloMuller logo

The logo was taking shape now, set in Akzidenz Grotesk Bold. Its not bad, but it takes too much space, and the double ll in “hello” reminded me too much of the Knoll logo, so I said good-bye to hello.

The final Muller logo

Of course I haven’t talked about the design of the double l’s and the © symbol… The reasoning behind them is, I’m afraid, fairly pedestrian. The decision to shift the l’s is purely an aesthetic decision, it just looked good to me, and a detail that set the logo design apart from a simple word mark. While I was designing the logo I was aware that my name isn’t all that rare, and there are a few Mullers out there in creative fields. I reasoned that the © symbol implies a sense of ownership, that this logo and the work it represents is mine.
Simple as that really. Since I was launching this new identity, I added my ximeraLabs logo to it, since that was the site people associated me with. I only used it for my site, and as helloMuller gained in name recognition, I dropped the ximeraLabs logo entirely.

hellomuller.com version 1, 2003-2006

The concept behind the site was very simple, a straight-forward no frills catalogue of work, where all work would be presented in an equal and chronological manner. Someone once likened it to a Letraset catalogue in concept, and I guess its as good a description as any. Just to add that little detail to my site, I added 1 colour in my otherwise black & white site: orange, another personal favourite (what can I say, I’m a child of the 70s). I only used it as a link colour and as a tiny graphic device at the top of the page.
Looking back now, I realize I added it because I was hesitant of having the whole site just B/W (aside from the links).

In 2006 I decided to redesign the site, and at the same time slightly update the logo. I had “signed” work occasionally as “XXXX was designed by Muller”, and liked the tone — almost like a label you’d find in your clothes, or on a piece of furniture (again, the theme of taking ownership of your work), and thus added that byline to the Muller word mark and placed the logo in an orange square to reinforce that label idea. As for the site design, I didn’t want to redesign as such, just update the layout so it could cater to the increased content, and fix issues that I had found in the previous design. I also wanted to give my homepage more reason to exist other than showing my logo really big, so it acts as a bit of a showcase and highlights some key projects. And because it is the homepage I decided to have it slightly different than the rest of the site (which hasn’t really changed that much) and set it in orange, using the metaphor of a book cover (like Grid Systems for example), subtly referencing design tropes, remixing them and making them my own.

In June this version of the site will be online for 3 years, which would mean that another refresh is in order. But to be honest, I’m not tired yet of this design, and the site is still doing what I want it to do — and now with the added blog I can see this incarnation existing for a few more years.

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.


The Codex Runicus

Chance would have it that during that time I was developing an angular typeface for another project (that never happened) at that time, which with some work could fit the bill.

Precursor to the Viking type

Using bits from my typeface sketch I created the initial idea for the Viking logo, keeping it quite traditional in a sense. Nothing to modern, and I even tried telescoping the type — as is so usual in comic logos — to create depth and a sense of power and speed coming towards the reader (I even tried adding an exclamation mark, but that was too much).

The first Viking logos

I sent those off to Ivan for feedback and he wasn’t too keen on the telescoping, but liked the direction of the logo.
continuing work I felt that the lettershapes were getting a bit too complex and maybe too thin for a cover of a comic.

Redrawn Viking logo & letter elements

With that in mind I started redrawing the letters, but this time in much thicker strokes, while keeping the elements I liked from the thin version — the letter ‘K’ in particular — and simplified the design into a much more robust shape that could comfortably grab your attention on the cover. Ivan was happy with this design, so now I had to come up with a cover treatment.

The initial cover treatment idea for Viking

By now Ivan had teamed up with artist Nic Klein, so I could tailor the cover design to include their names (since its a creator-owned book, I don’t have to worry about rotating creative teams) on the cover. Because Ivan wanted something modern and unusual for the book I thought it’d be nice if the title bled off the cover, almost as if it was a bold print error — to strengten the effect of a rebellious, almost “punk” book. The logo would be supported by a skewed block of colour (which could change each issue based on the cover art).

The problem was however, that the placement of the names and the issue numbering looked like an afterthought, especially the numbering — I hadn’t even taken double digits in account! I wanted the creator names to be in a neutral, but strong typeface sitting under the logo, but couldn’t really find anything off the shelf that made me happy. So I decided to continue the style and design the rest of the charachter set desinged for the logo to create the names.

The final Viking logo, with one small alteration

It wasn’t too much of a stretch to design the rest of the charachters and a short while later I had the final logo & type treatment for the book. The only thing I had to adjust was the letter B, looking too much like a D the first time around.

The treated Viking logo

Going back to to the cover design, I kept the skewed postion of the logo, but got rid of the colour block to allow more space for the art. Because the logo was now “free” as it were, I could move it around on the cover, placing it in such a way it wouldn’t intervene too much with the art — but blend in with it. To do this, and adding that little “rough Viking touch” to it, I dug up some photoshop texture brushes and went to work on it before finally bringing all elements together for the cover.

Viking issue 1 cover

Viking will be released in April 2009 from Image Comics. You can read the advance solicitation here, and have a sneak peek at a teaser.

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.

This meant of course that a lot of my initial ideas for the book design had to be canned due to time restrictions. Rantz had worked out a structure in the book where each story would have an uneven number of pages, with 1 page added for the song lyrics and creator credits per story. Each story would start with a credit/lyrics page on the left, art on the right. With that knowledge I had started experimenting with Jason Levesque’s tattoo patterns (again, check the previous post) to create random patterns to be used for the credits, so each story would have a unique design. Due to the time constraints I had to look for a more standardized solution.

Page pattern sketch

Because the book is all about music (or at least based on music lyrics) I wanted to keep a certain style to the design of the credits page, similar to liner notes/lyrics you’d get in a CD booklet — while adding the style elements that we’d created during the logo & cover design process (i.e. using our chosen fonts and colours).

Lyrics page test

In the initial design I tried to weasel in my circle again, but as you can see it was too restrictive, especially if a story had a creative team of more than 2 people — and it just looked like I was trying too hard to come up with someting “cool”, rather than be informative. The design of the page shouldn’t try to upstage the art. So after a few more revisions and finetuning the design we settled on, what I feel, was quite a successful layout.

Lyrics/credits page — final design

The page follows a 2 column grid, with the title and creator credits centered at the left hand side with a tattoo pattern strip running along the side, bleeding off the page. A faint half-circle sits behind the text to create a stylistic connection to a 12″ album sleeve gutter. The right column would obviously contain the lyrics and was flexible enough to accomodate longer text so it could be split in two smaller ones. All credit for that goes to Liz who took my loose ideas and finetuned them to make it actually work!

Page spread with lyrics column split

This approach would be applied throughout the book preceding every story — and we’d apply a reversed colour scheme to the editorial pages to create a strong distinction between the two and create a start and stop to the book.

Masthead & Introduction spread preceding the stories

Afterword & editorial spread following the stories

So far so good! While Liz and I were working on the “skeleton” pages of the book, Rantz was working overtime at his side of the world — figuring out the running order of the stories and making sure everyone on the project, which included over 80 creators, was on the same wavelength. The deadline for the creators to deliver their stories was April 15th, which gave us around a week to drop in the 450+ pages of art in the book, which seemed simple enough at the time.

April 15th was approaching very quick and working with Rantz we had laid out the complete running order of the book. However, we realized we had way too much content and not enough pages: we had been too generous in our allowances for the editorial pages.
Since the whole project had already been budgetted and there was absolutely no room for expansion we all went back to the drawing board to figure out how to fix this — getting rid of all unnecessary content. This luckily proved to be fairly painless: we dramatically trimmed down the creator biography pages and rearranged the rest of the editorial pages to make it all work.

Finally, on the 15th of April we had all the artwork for the book. Everything had been arriving in little bits over the past week — with pages and folders appearing on Rantz’s fileserver hour after hour, so we finally set to work checking everything and adding all the pages to the book. After a few more revisions and checks from the whole team at Image and Tori it was all good to go to print.

Ah, but the printer was in China, and the Image team needed to be able to make last minute adjustments to the book (mostly adding legalese and minor non-design issues), so they needed the raw InDesign files. Since time was really, really short now and only we had the final art files (because we’d flattened and converted the majority of the pages) there was no time to upload all 50GB of art back to the server for Image to then download it again. Nothing a few DVDs of data and FedEx couldn’t handle. So, right on schedule Image got the files and everything was sent to the printer! Yay, job done!

Now that the book was in production we could all catch our breath and look at what else needed to be done: the marketing stuff. Convention season was looming in America and there was a need for a set of collateral material to support the book at retailer and consumer level: everything from in-store posters, free giveaways, stickers, temporary tattoos and bookmarks had to be produced. This proved to be the easiest part of the job because by now we’d developed the whole language of the book — so it was just a case of applying it to the various materials needed, which you can see in full here.

Finally, 550+ emails and 2 months later Comic Book Tattoo was launched at the Sand Diego Comic-Con with incredible success — it was the biggest thing at the convention right behind the Watchmen Movie news. Not bad for an independent book!

It goes without saying that Liz and I wouldn’t have been able to do this on our own, so a big thanks has to go out to the Image team and Traci & Alan Hui in particular who made sure everything went as planned. And of course thanks to Rantz for letting us design “his baby”.

Now go out and buy the new Special Edition slipcased hardcover release of Comic Book Tattoo, available from the 19th of November!

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.

The 12″ x 12″ 500 page book was going to feature a mix of mainstream and independent creators, each interpreting a song rather than doing a straightforward adaptation. The production values were going to be lavish (aside from the formats, we were going to have spot varnishing, semi transparent inlays, a leather bound slipcase, etc…). While Rantz, Tori and her team and the guys and gals at Image Comics were working out the logistics, we started thinking about the design of the book.

I started playing around with some ideas for the title (Comic Book Tattoo — after a line in Flying Dutchman), looking for a design that doesn’t scream “this is a comic”, but is rather more considered while still having a strong visual impact.

First attempt at CBT logo

My first go at the logo straddled the bold graphics of comics, in a custom typeface that is a mix of styles and elements — visualising the idea behind the book whilst creating a unique looking name mark for the book.

While I was working on the logo, Rantz had contacted illustrator Jason Levesque to do the cover piece.
Jason’s art is quite unique and straddles that fine line between comics, commercial illustration and fine art — a perfect choice for the book.

Soon enough, I had a rough sketch from Jason to work with, so I tried some options with the logo.

Initial cover sketches, using preliminary cover art by Jason Levesque

As you see in the above sketches, the designs are far from perfect. The immediate problem was that the logo was taking up too much space and obscuring the art. Included in the sketches is the spine of the book just to give everyone involved an idea how it would look stacked on the shelves. A few days after I had sent those ideas, Rantz got in touch with feedback from him, Tori and Image Comics.

Naturally the logo and cover layouts got shot down. The problem was that the logo looked too sophisticated and, sad but true, it might alienate people because it doesn’t look like a comic book logo (comic fans, predisposed?!). They were looking at a much more literal version of the logo — something that looked like a typical tattoo. I did agree with the layout feedback though. It just didn’t work.

Rantz’s feedback notes on the cover & logo

Using the feedback as a starting point for a new approach. I wasn’t too keen of using a literal “tattoo” design for the logo design — I thought that would only do the book harm — but I could see that using the visual language could work. It also made a lot of sense to use Jason’s patterns in the logo design to bring all elements together.

Tattoo patterns designed by Jason Levesque

Instead of creating a bespoke font for the logo, I figured it might be smarter to use existing typefaces. Partly to restrict myself to go off on another unworkable tangent, but mostly because the majority of comic book logos are custom type designs all adhering to the “BAM! POW!” visual language — something I felt was important to avoid. So I settled on a combination of Eagle Bold for “COMIC BOOK” and Leather, a blackletter font, for “TATTOO”.

CBT logo development

Finally the logo was starting to take shape. The combination of the typefaces worked well, creating a nice tension. Part of Jason’s pattern “flows” out of the word TATTOO and the logomark is held together by the graphic device at the top — creating something that can stand on its own, as well as being applied to the book and related collateral.

By now Jason had finished the cover art, so now I could start using a specific colour palette for the logo. But soon enough we all came to realize that even the new logo wouldn’t work on the cover…

Final cover art, not so final logo

The new logo still took up way too much space. Reducing the size wasn’t really an option since it’d become illegible and we’d use the details of the ‘tat’ art. Using a bold outline around the logo to separate it from the art made it look like someone slapped a sticker on the cover, so that was a no-go either.

Cover versions of the logo

The only solution that I saw fit was to make a variant of the logo to use on the cover art (and subsequently for use when space was limited).
The immediate ideas weren’t perfect: there were no graphic elements (i.e. the line art), and Tori really didn’t like the circle idea, because it looked too much like a price sticker on a CD (something I really liked, since the book was after all album sized and had an obvious music tie-in. Anyway, I digress).

Eventually we all came to an agreement and the final logos were signed off:

The “full” CBT logo (L), and its little brother for the cover (R).

Now that the logos were set in stone, we could move on and soon enough the cover was designed, using both logos (back & front covers) and using the tattoo pattern subtly in the background. (for bigger pictures, just head over to Mr & Mrs M!)

The cover design for the paperback edition of Comic Book Tattoo

Now that the logo and cover art were done, we could start focusing on the actual book, which was looking like a mammoth task – roughly 500 pages, mostly comprised of art pages. Pages we didn’t have yet.

TO BE CONTINUED…!

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.

For those who have never seen Logan’s Run (shame on you), the core element of the movie is that life ends at 30 years. When you get born, every human being gets a crystal implanted in the palm of their left hand (the palm flower) that starts at white/translucent, and cycles through yellow, green and red as you age. 10 Days before you turn 30 it stars blinking red-black. When it stops blinking and stays black you’re time is up. That, above all other elements in the movie stood out to me and the cycle never really gets addressed fully in the movie.

My interpretation of the Life Clock

I based my design on the grow rings of a tree. A circular design (as in the palm flower), but with the aging process reversed. Instead of ‘growing’ outward, I reversed the principle so that everything ends up in the centre, or the Carousel.

Carousel in Logan’s Run

The diagram was then populated with references to the film, the settings and the characters – and that would create my main image.

The logo, however, was a whole different animal. The movie uses Avant Garde for its title and end credits and a customized version of it in the posters, so I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

Logan’s Run title card

My attempt at the Logan’s Run logo

My initial idea was based on a custom typeface I designed last year that I modified for the poster. However, it didn’t fit with the design at all, and was threatening to overtake it while also ruining my very information-led poster design. So I dropped that idea quite fast and decided to set the whole poster in Univers 47 Light Condensed and Univers 57 Condensed:

Logan’s Run poster A

GREAT! Job done! Well… I wasn’t happy with it.

OK, I liked the idea behind it, but the execution lacked. It all felt a bit déjà vu to be honest (I have a weak spot for circles ya know) and in the end the poster didn’t feel like Logan’s Run to me anymore.

This was around the 24th of May. The exhibit opened on the 29th. Faaaan-tastic.

Exterior of Selfridges in Birmingham

I’d worked myself in a corner and was pretty much just going to go with my design (I really wanted to participate in the exhibit), until my wife Liz mentioned the Selfridges store in Birmingham designed by Future Systems and remarked that the shape and exterior of the building could be something from Logan’s Run, telling me it’d be interesting to create an image of an object that is as much sensual as dangerous – alluring to the poster’s tag line. I asked my brother Tim to come up with a “kind of red rubbery studded ball in 3D” as the main image for the poster. With the ball being a metaphor for all kinds of things – pleasure, pain, the palm flower, Carousel, the domed city,…

This turned the whole design of the poster around. Instead of the dark colours of the first design I opted for a clean/clinical white space with the ball floating in the middle. This, I believe, is much more truthful to the atmosphere of the movie. To round it up I changed the typography quite drastically from the rigid Univers to Futura. This switch made the poster look a lot more 70s Sci-Fi, and I replaced the ‘O’ with a glowing circle – another hint at the palm flower and the main protagonist (Logan is a ‘Red 5′ in the movie).

The final result

A huge thank you to Darren Firth, who did a splendid job of putting the exhibition together (and coming up with the concept!), but mostly for managing to get my poster printed and included in the exhibition after I delivered past the deadline!

The poster is available as a 50cm x 70cm Giclée print on Da Vinci Archival Art Paper in an edition of 25 priced at £115, available from Wear It With Pride.

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.

Various “robot” parts

Since the cover design would play on the cyborg theme I started designing various elements in Illustrator that I could use to build a cyborg. When you think of cyborgs in popular (SF) culture, you’ll always think of them as a mixture of organic and robotic parts (the Terminator perhaps being the most famous example). For the cover I wanted to focus on the cold mechanical part (also because a skull is more dramatic than a face).

Cyborg design

After having designed the cyborg skeleton I was a bit unsure how it would work on the cover. Its a nice image, but it lacks focus. One of the prime requirements for a cover image is that it catches your attention. The full body of the cyborg was too static.

Artwork cropped to cover size

When I started designing the cover, I thought it’d crop the artwork so the head of the cyborg fills up the whole space.
This creates a much more powerful image and focuses the attention on one element. I also decided early on to keep the cover image very minimal by only using 2 or 3 basic colours.

Cover art with halo

The next element to bring in was the halo. At first I played around just using a flat disc (as is common in religious iconography), but felt it was too flat and it didn’t really fit with the rest of the art.
So I designed a “cybernetic” version if you will that fitted with the tone of the book.

Final cover for St. Cyborg’s

For the final design of the book, I got rid of the “Bender” teeth and put the title/author in that spot, slightly changed the position of the artwork and flipped it for the back cover (I’ve always liked the idea of the back cover being an extension of the front cover), using the back of the cyborg for the content blurb and other text that needs to be shown (playing with the idea that its imprinted on his back).

Instead of designing a custom title (like I did for Worry Doll) I went with standard Helvetica Neue Bold, for no other reason that the cover art was strong enough that it didn’t need to be supported by another graphic element (which would only detract from it), and seeing that the theme of the book is an institution, you can’t go wrong with Helvetica.

The book is currently at the printer and will be available in December if I’m not mistaken.