Hi everyone, I'm Greg Bernstein, I teach graphic design and typography at Georgia State University.
I also run my own design studio made by Greg and that's what I'm here to talk to you about
tonight.
I design packaging for bands you haven't heard of because I design, it seems exclusively
for independent bands and record companies.
When I was finishing school and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life,
I looked at my CD collection and decided I want to make these albums, the ones that I
collect and so I contacted the bands and record companies that I listened to and bands that
I was friends with and said let me work for you and long story short that's what I've
been doing for over a decade now.
So here is a collection of work you have not seen before.
Over the course of the last decade I've discovered that some things do not change regardless
of genre, regardless of band, regardless of what time period it is, just some things remain
the same.
The first of those is that a band will come to me and say we know exactly what we want.
This is entirely untrue, it's a lie, bands have no idea what they want.
As it says right here, they don't know.
So my job as a graphic designer working with bands is to figure out what they want.
Bands are made up of four individuals who might use the same language but they're describing
radically different things so if the four members of the band don't know what they want
how am I supposed to know what they want?
So it's just a process of getting through their ideas and coming up with something.
First example is my most recent project.
This is a band called Linus from Sacramento.
They sent me this photo by a designer named Scott Hansen and they said this is what we
want, lush outdoor nature photos with very clean, very simple typography.
So I said this is easy, I can do this.
I went out and shot photos over a few days and sent them some ideas.
These are two of about 15 ideas I sent them.
Lush outdoor photos with clean typography and they said no, not us, not what we want.
So they sound similar to the Beach Boys and that's how they describe themselves so I figured
maybe we should go in that direction and try to tie into their sound which is very vintage.
So you'll see in this next round I did more of a vintage look.
It actually looks worn and weathered and instead of vibrant lush photography I used warm colors
and aged photos and they said actually this isn't half bad, this is kind of what we want.
How don't we go further and really tie into this Beach Boys connection and make it look
like something from the era when the Beach Boys played.
So as you're going to see in this next slide, I actually used the Beach Boys Pet Sounds
typeface for their band name and they said this is it, this is our album and this is
what's coming out next week.
Vintage, I wanted to make it look like something you would find in a record store in the 60s
or 70s including making it look distressed and weathered and that's the final product.
A year ago I worked for a band called Camarada from Milwaukee.
They sent me some album covers that they really liked and they said we want photos.
More than anything else it's got to be a cityscape and it's got to be a photo and we want very
clean modern typography and again like a moron I said well that's easy I can do that.
So I did that and you're going to see in these next slides I did some daytime cityscape,
some nighttime cityscapes, very clean modern type and they said yeah we love these, we
don't want these for our album though.
So if I did exactly what they described and that was wrong then the opposite must be right.
So I did something that you're going to see in a second with no photos, with a very warm
feel, very organic and very illustrative and they said yeah this actually is more in line
with what we're thinking and they liked the idea of an illustrated city and they liked
the idea of shapes implying a city, they said just kind of mix these together and see what
you come up with.
So you're going to see in the next slide this is what we did.
It's an illustration mixed with some shapes and it's very worn and weathered looking and
it's not a photo, it's still a city but not at all what they described when they approached
me.
So that brings me to my next point which is that the more I work with the band and the
deeper the history the easier the job is and the better the end result is.
When you work with a band you share a vernacular, you share a relationship and when they describe
something even if they're not using words that really relate to the description you
know what they're trying to get at.
So the first example I'm going to show is a band called Hammer Sadies.
I worked with them over the period of eight years and by this point in our relationship
they were able to just hand me their lyrics and say read these, just come up with something
and we'll let you know if it's right or wrong.
So I read the lyrics and I came up with this idea of seeing beauty all around you and did
some montages of seeing stars in the sky during the day and they said yeah you nailed
it, that's exactly what we had in mind.
So that was the album right there.
Same deal, Red Hot Valentine's, I worked with them on a couple of albums.
They said we have this idea of having that feeling when you have a crush on somebody
in junior high, can you do something with that?
How about a notebook with handwriting in it, oh cool, yeah do that.
So that was it, that was the entire meeting with the band, I sent them this, they said
okay and that was the end of the consultation and we were done.
Now those are the good times, there are bad times, my bad time was a guy named Rusty Anderson
who is Paul McCartney's guitar player, Rusty had a solo album coming out and he sent me
a photo, I said Rusty what do you want to do with this photo, what you're about to
see here and Rusty said you got to see the photo, he said alright I got this photo and
I said I like this photo, you know it's a nice color palette, good composition despite
his pants, I said what do you want to do, he said take me out of the photo, put me underwater,
make it look like I'm walking on the ocean floor and I don't like my t-shirt so put a
different graphic on my shirt and I thought he was joking but he wasn't so yeah there's
a description, I spent five days sending him everything except for what he asked for until
he finally said really I want to be on the ocean floor and I did it and the best part
is that not only did I have to do it for that one photo but there were seven other photos
that I had to do that process to so without further ado if I timed this right there's
Rusty walking on the ocean floor wearing a t-shirt with a different graphic on it, I'm
going to pause for a second so you can take this in, so this is the exception to the rule,
this is a bad example but this is one out of a hundred jobs that come in but my fourth
constant is the process is always rewarding, when I start a job I don't know how it's going
to end up and that's the best part of the job, I don't know what the concept is going
to be like once I finish it, you have all these artists giving you input and it's that
input that really makes the process worthwhile, it's why I became a graphic designer and why
I do it, my voice just cracked so thank you for witnessing that and that's my time.
