Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Gubenthal - german for "I got to design another CD!"



It is with a swelling heart full of pride that present to you the album Gubenthal - German For Your Mom. Gubenthal is my brother's band. They practice in my basement and I love their music. I have been wanting them to come out with a CD from the start, because their songs get stuck in my head and I need to have them available to blast in my car and sing along to. I posted about them here, with photos I took of them in a field and in the recording studio.

While they liked my photos, we also were able to have my über talented buddy Corey Woodruff do a photo shoot with the boys of Gubenthal. He blogged the photo shoot here. Yes, they wanted the setting to be a public restroom. I was not fully convinced, but the photo shoot itself was a lots of laughs, and the resulting photos make me smile.





Professional photos by one of St. Louis' premier music photogs was a great opportunity, so when I was designing the CD packaging, of course I based it around Corey's photos. Using a shot that had a good portion of stall door, all I could picture was bathroom graffiti. I used Photoshop to "carve" the band name and CD title into the stall door. For the rest of the CD I used a typeface that looked like it was written with a marker, to carry on the bathroom graffiti theme.



The boys wanted some of the field photos I took of them on the inside cover and on the actual CD, so I did a little collage to integrate them as smoothly as possible.

This is the second CD cover I've designed. See this post about my CD design for So Much Closer, and some of my favorite album design. This is the kind of design work I love the most... helping passionate, talented musicians make a finished product.

So yeah... wherever you live, support local music. Support Gubenthal by "like"ing them on FB and ordering a CD. Better yet, go see them this Sunday night at Off Broadway at Rockabration 2011 with The Orbz and others. This is gonna be such a fun show! See you there? If I can't convince you, maybe Robbie the dinosaur can:





Friday, May 20, 2011

hipster toys

Remember my Emo Toys post? Well, here are some of my toys being all hipster and shizz. It's not called "Hipstamatic" for nuthin.


Hipster Domo


Hipster Ernie


Hipster Baseball Player who Looks Like OJ Simpson


Hipster Patrick


Hipster Red


Hipster Numbskull


Hipster Octopus


Hipster Bert


Hipster Cat in the Hat


Hipster Octopus 2


Hipster Kermie


Hipster Sticker Face Thingy


Hipster Curious George


Hipster Snowball


Hipster Domo 2


Hipster Worry Doll


Hipster Super Girl Rubber Duck


Hipster Jesus

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Mixed tape: campfire songs!

I'm going on my first camping trip of the summer this weekend! I'm not going with family this time, but if I were, these are the songs we'd be singing around the campfire. Maybe I'll try to teach some of them to my friends.

Soco Amaretto Lime, Brand New


Bubble Toes, Jack Johnson


Plastic Jesus, From Cool Hand Luke


Rocky Top, Crystal Gayle


Titanic


King of the Road, Roger Miller


Rocky Raccoon, Beatles


El Scorcho, Weezer


Don't Stop Believin', Journey


What are some of your favorite campfire songs?

Friday, May 6, 2011

pup pix


Sorry for the silence here. Hopefully these pictures of some of my favorite doggies will help you to forgive me.