Nick Harper: “The Man Who Plays Guitar Like He’s Wearing God’s Underpants” as some music journo dubbed him many years ago. I knew him from school and used to hang around at VE band rehearsals.
It was fairly evident even then that they weren’t just “some 6th form band”. There was something a bit special about them.
And as it happens, I was right: Nick has since carved out a very successful solo career spanning five decades, 14 studio albums and various live, compilation and single releases and, much to my joy and dismay, he asked me to do the artwork for his 2004 album Bloodsongs.
And then in 2005 he asked me to do Treasure Island.
Fast forward to 2025 and I’ve just finished all the artwork for the vinyl and CD releases of 58 Fordwych Road.
I guess I must be doing something right 🙂
As the title suggests, this section is just full of random stuff; one-off projects, pointless Photoshop composites, painstaking recreations of poor-quality images, spoof posters, a bit of pen and ink, some basic 3D work; ideas that have come to me in the shower, whilst doing the dishes and whilst on poo patrol in the garden (we have a dog!)
I included this section to show that design isn’t just a job to me; it’s not something I do solely for other people or solely for payment. I do stuff like this because I want to, not because I have to, and that love of doing what I do will always colour anything I’m asked to do professionally, no matter how dull or boring the project might be!
Nick Harper aside, I’ve done CD and Vinyl artwork for other people too over the years. Some have been my own designs and others have had to adhere to exisiting ideas or very firm art direction from the client. Either way, they all involve meticulous planning and millimetre precision when adhering to various blank templates for the cover, the inside gatefold, the on-body artwork etc, as well a good working knowledge of print stuff: bleed margins, bitmap dpi, printers’ marks, pdf export settings and the like.
Equally as important is a good, sharp eye when it comes to spelling and grammar, especially for print projects. For instance, if I were to spell sentecne wrong in this sentence, I could easily pop back into the WordPress backend at a later date and change it. Make that mistake (or not spot it) during a print project and that typo is there forever; a glaring and embarrassing reminder that you don’t just copy and paste from a client’s website-content.doc, you proof-read it first!
Most of this section is pretty uninspiring, as most of it was done for a marketing company whose client base consisted of some of the dullest people, sectors and institutions imaginable.
There’s only so much pizazz, energy, flair and excitement you can inject into the topics of invoice finance or pension plans, especially when the post content itself is dry and humourless and the corporate guidelines document is set in stone with absolutely no wriggle room at all. But I’ve included some of these more dismal examples only to show that I can make the most of a rubbish hand of cards if needs be 🙂
I must point out that when it comes to social media posts, I’m not a social media expert. I don’t know the ins and outs of Sprout Social, Hubspot, Meltwater et al. and I don’t do the analytics or the reporting, I don’t master the campaigns and I don’t write the content (although I do proof-read it to the nth degree) I just do the pretty bits! I take the brief and guidelines and come up with something compatible, fitting and – hopefully – a little bit different that tells the story visually and with impact.
I’ve also included some of the more exciting and humorous ones 🙂
Way back in the 1980s – inspired as I was by various artists such as Brian Bolland, Cam Kennedy, Steve Dillon, Carlos Ezquerra and Dave Gibbons (who all drew for 2000 AD) – I started dabbling in pen and ink comic art. Having not studied art at school, I was a bit of a late bloomer and my early attempts at emulating the masters were rather poor and risible.
However, having a job that – at the time – allowed me to sit in a hut all day doing bugger all whilst looking after an otherwise empty hut (not my actual job description, but Official Secrets Act, tho’) I was able to spend countless hours on my own trying to perfect my art.
Although never as good as the artists I was inspired by, I did improve a lot and – come 1986 or thereabouts – was good enough to contribute my own stuff to a small, underground comic called FADOOOM!
But then life bowled a couple of googlies at me (that’s the English equivalent of a “curved ball” to all you Americans who don’t understand cricket) and the pen and ink stuff took a back seat, before finally getting out of the car and wandering off into the distance some time around 1995.
Many years later (well into the next century) I decided to give it a go again, but this time using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. And here are some of my later efforts, most of which can be found on my Teemill store as t-shirt and poster designs. The FADOOOM! covers aren’t actual covers from the original comic (most of them don’t exist any longer!) They’re more of a faithful reproduction.
