Recent work: the Hype Machine 2010

Following up on last year's illustration for the Hype Machine is this installment representing Canadian supergroup, The New Pornographers. There were a couple of concepts that I considered for this piece: London tart cards (the postcards left by escorts in London phone booths), 1970s Times Square pornography, and cheap ads found in the back of men's magazines.

While sketching out possible layouts, it struck me that all of those concepts and any variation on them were far too obvious. As such, I quickly wrote out a list of adjectives corresponding to my concepts and then tried to think of antonyms.

Brainstorming antonyms

With a new direction in mind, I quickly settled on an aesthetic that paid homage to the Rat Pack, the Vegas of days gone by, cocktail lounges and luxury, if not class and elegance. It ended up being diametrically opposite to what I'd be developing previously. I'm pretty pleased with the resulting lettering and layout – my only regret being that I didn't have time to work in some ligatures.

Click to enlarge