Blue Moon Band Poster #20

I know what you're thinking, "Does no one else on the planet need a poster?" Well, the answer is probably yes, but I am lucky enough to have these guys let me loose and get creative push myself with new ideas. Not only that, but the band might be viewed as always fresh and believe it or not, people collect these things and look forward to new ones. My belief is that people look at a shoe poster once or twice, and then disregard it in the future whether there is new information on it or not. So, keep them interested right? I don't know. So, this one is once again a collage of photos that were taken. The semi, by my dad, the guitar in my kitchen and the road.... well the road was used from some stock photography. Combine all ingredients, whisk until all lumps are gone, a dash of salt. The tastiest show on earth. I used this font, cause I wanted one that could have been used a century ago. And didn't steal away from the images too much. Although, I wish there wasn't as much type. But oh wells. Oh, and I generated it half tone just to push the theme.

Blue Moon Band Poster #19

Yet another. The idea was again pretty good, but didn't follow the event. I'll explain. The venue, Ickey Nickel, the event, Ragbrai. So instead of incorporating some sort of bike theme into the poster, I decided to take on one of the ideas that floated around during the last Ickey Nickel show poster. And so I present the nickel stuck to the buttom of a dirty shoe with gum of course. There are once again some new things in this poster, such as the block type at the bottom that I don't always do, but this allowed for it. I thought I would italicize the type as well, which I don't always do, because I thought flow of the poster was "moving" from right to left. And the white space turned out nice, I think. As for the images. The legs belong to my 3 year out boy Cayden and the boots he is wearing are uncall Nate's. The ground is actually a photo I took in a drunken jaunt through old town omaha. Old brick roads just beg to be captured in blissful digital imagery. We go every year for St. Pat's. How do you like the faux shadows of the strings and shoes? Talk amongst yourselves.

Blue Moon Band Poster #18

This might perhaps be my favorite of the twenty some posters i've had the pleasure of doing over the years for the Blue Moon Band. They were playin out at The Ickey Nickel bar and I wanted to do something different. I scraped the first idea and decided to take on an idea I had on the way home from work. I grabbed a nickel, threw on some toothpaste, mixed in some lint from the dryer and worked it around a bit, cleaning areas as I went. I then laid it on the dryer and got as much light around it as I could. I took a macro shot with my camera and got a pretty neat pic. I enhanced some of the colors on the gunk and added a green funk to please all senses. I rarely do a white background ad or poster, but think I should do more. It's always so clean and bright.

Blue Moon Band Poster #17

There was this caboose sitting across from work in the middle of a major railroad junction for a few months. I looked at it just about every morning at evening when I finally decided to walk over there and take a few snaps of it. I was lucky enough to sit down in a sort of ditch that elevated the car above me quite a bit. It gave it a pretty cool dramatic effect. I then did some tone mapping and cloned out the original text on the car only to replace it with some of the info for the upcoming gig. Typography is tough work most of the time, it's kinda nice to actually coe up with a plan for text before hand, in stead of just throwing it in later.

Blue Moon Band Poster #16

Sometimes great ideas actually work out well. I discussed with my dad a few ideas I had for upcoming shows when he came up with the Guitar mothership idea. So we continued the Blues Invasion tour with the addition of this poster design. The guitar is/was a photo of the band's guitar player's guitar. I found a neat texture online and wrapped it around the guitar, added a few fighter picks for depth and another moon in the background that utilizes another texture that I have in my neato-dorito arsenal of texture picks that i've taken over the years.

Blue Moon Band Poster #15

Holidays always give an opportunity to intermingle ideas, shapes and colors where they might not have been conceived of otherwise. So here is St. Paddy's Day poster design using a great color scheme accompanied by a collage of shapes. The hardest part is proximity to tell you the truth. But it worked out in the end. My favorite part has to be the use of one of my texture pics in the background.

Blue Moon Band Poster #14

So, the idea was great. Make a Valentine's event poster and tie it to the band by having it look as if an astronaut decided to draw a heart around the bands logo in moon dust. I managed to find, after some good time, a decent size pic of the footprint on the moon and just flipped it and tried hard to make it look like the left boot and not a flipped-replica of the right boot. Some areas good use some retouching now that I take another look.

Blue Moon Band Poster #13

Here's one that should give anybody a good laugh. I kinda wanted to come up with a vintage Freakshow poster look. So I grabbed some photos of the guitar player and the bass guitar player and made vector solids out of them. This is also the first poster I decided to use the "alternate" Blue Moon Band logo on. I thought it was just too perfect-a-fit not to. Im starting to realize that adding unusual shapes to fill space kinda works.

Blue Moon Band Poster #12

So they were tearing the old stockyards building "KD Station" when it hit me. Why couldn't they just bring in some unidentified flying harmonicas to do the demo? But actually, I had my dad, harmonica player for the Blue Moon Band, go down and get some pics. He was almost run over by work trucks in the process and got kicked out of there pretty quick. But he managed to take a good amount of neat pics. So I gave the destruction a sort of "hot look" for lack of a better term. Added some harmonicas from another pic I took, a few dashes of laser, and a splash of apocalyptic mushroom clouds later... walah. I give you the Blues Invasion Tour, Version 1.

Blue Moon Band Poster #11

Here is one of my favorite Blue Moon Band posters to date. We took the picture of the lead guitar player's guitar on the night of the previous show with this idea in the works. The idea was obvious but harder was finding a rocket tower image that will print well. And I unfortunately don't have any high res photos of a shuttle take off laying around. So someone kill me for taking this one. I swear a week later I saw the same image in Time Magazine for an ad. So I am not alone. Haha. Anyways. I dropped in the guitar, gave it some falling ice pieces and made some white space for my text. I don't get to use vertical text a lot, but this one needed it as the poster is very vertical. I also pick my battles with the lens flare effect. But in this case, It came out nice. Oh yeah, and another creative way to give the show time.

Blue Moon Band Poster #10

One year after the first poster I created for the Blue Moon Band, we come to the annual show at Red's Pub down the street from the always crazyfun Saturday In The Park Event. The idea was brought together after brainstorming a summer theme and something that brought a fresh idea to the table. And so nothing says summer better than the coined phrase "fresh squeezed blues" and wrapping up that fruit into our little planetary orbiter redefined as the moonfruit. Haha. It works for me. I also really liked the color scheme on this one.

Blue Moon Band Poster #9

So after looking through the multiple event posters that have been done for The Blue Moon Band, you might be asking "why not have one poster and just change the date like every other band on the planet?" Well, that's just it. We've sort of decided that separating them from every other band was a good thing. Plus it gives me a chance to be creative and gives the fans and others something to look for. Honestly, most local show posters that are used over and over again get overlooked when repeated. My opinion. Make your own. I don't care. Another goal was to be as different as possible with each idea. This gives me a challenge each time and thus makes me a better designer, as well as adding a new wow factor for the viewers each time.

So with that said, this is the poster for the gig at Awesome Biker Nights in Sioux City, Iowa. The rider is the drummer of the band Jeff Rhymer. Picture of which was taken at the same time as the photo that was used in a previous show poster. This one was much harder to C.B.O. to tell the truth but in the end I was very happy with it. Feedback please.

Blue Moon Band Poster #8

This is an idea brought to life. I had been thinking about organizing this poster for about a year before fruition. The boy playing the harmonica in front is my oldest boy Cayden in a rented pin striped suit and fedora hat. We took him to a local loading dock that really looks like it hasn't been touched in 100 years. We put the guitar case and suitcase, along with a cardboard sign saying "Chesterfield or Bust" on it. The Chesterfield being the venue of the show. I also added their logo to the suitcase. My boy wasn't keen on sitting on the edge of the dock and a train going by about 20 feet away wasn't helping matters. So I took the pic of him at home and dropped him in. He is a little big, but it works because it's hard to scale anything in the front of the poster as it was. This building actually started on fire a few months later.

Blue Moon Band Poster #7

Okay so this poster is yet another Blue Moon Band special. The rider you see is actually the drummer on his bike which I had to change the colors a bit to fit this one. We took the picture next to a house that didn't make the C.B.O. easy. But it all works in the end. I added the fire, changed the road to blacktop and wanted to keep a neat sort of warm color scheme and dull look through out the poster which really allowed the bright blue text elements to pop off. Wasn't extremely happy with the layout of the info, but there was just so much of it and I would really like to play with that more. But what is done is done. Oh and the dead man's hand. Taken on my kitchen counter.

Blue Moon Band Poster #6

Here is another poster for the Blue Moon Band. This one uses the theme of the "Skyline" and runs with it. I've actually taken a texture that I have in my personal texture library and made the moon out of it. Looks perty sweet if you ask me, but you didn't and I apologize. I also brought a different sort of color scheme and typographical scheme to this poster compared to some past. Along with that I brought in the new logo that I had worked up for the band. Also if you look closely you can see the keyboard player and the bass player in the back sorta hovering over the scape.

Blue Moon Band Poster #5

This poster idea came on a squeeze. My dad took some pictures of an old run down house outside of town and we decided to try and use them in a new poster. I was going for a crossroads sort of theme I guess. The street sign is actually a pic of the street sign right outside my house. I just grunged it up a bit and away we go. I like this one for the color and once again the limited use of type. But still informative. Click image to enlarge.

Blue Moon Band Poster #4

 You might recognize the guitar neck from the one I did for the Shayna Baszler website. But since that wasn't being put to good use I decided to make a sweet poster for the Blue Moon Band. Once again, all done in Illustrator minus the wood grain. This poster makes me smile cause it's so simple with the information. Get's the point across and looks nice to boot. Click the image to get more detail on the custom drawn strings. There were so many paths I had to rasterize them just to work. Haha. Whateva.

Blue Moon Band Poster #3

This poster is probably my favorite of any. I will admit that it was really hard to get a trip to the moon for a moonscape picture. So I grabbed one off the internet. I humbly apologize and would like to say to the capturee that your image was the only one on the planet that I would ever want. And you rock. Thank you and I am honestly not a thief. Other than that I altered some tornados and lightning and took the guitar player Bobby Peters to a level he's never been. This poster was rightfully labeled the "Path of Destruction Tour" and got rave reviews. Click image to enlarge.

Blue Moon Band Poster #2

 A fan favorite. My dad and I drove around taking really cool pictures of old abandoned buildings one day and just sort of brainstormed ourselved into a semi-coma. After we woke up we noticed we had this sweet picture of the local KD Station building. I actually took the picture angled so I wouldn't have to do it later in photoshop. Laugh out loud. And I ended up with this that very night. I really wanted it to look like the text was painted on years ago and just sort of faded. If you look closely you can see a Blue Moon Beer logo in the bottom left corner. I hope I don't get into trouble for that. The local distributor said it was cool. That's all this mofo needed. This is also the first use of one of a series of Blue Moon Band logos I worked up. Click to see it big and stuff.

Blue Moon Band Poster #1

 This is the very first Blue Moon poster I had the privilege of doing. My idea was of an old school blues poster that looked like type exploded all over it. You know the kind. The pic is of the world famous Tim Vollmer and his harp. It makes me laugh at how much text was used in this compared to the newer "more to the point" Blue Moon posters. Anyways, I misspelled keyboards and the show rocked anyways. Click image to enlarge.