I’m on vacation in Denver this week and yesterday, I took a visit to Lakeside Amusement Park.  It’s not the biggest, scariest or best amusement park in the area, but it has something the others don’t.  While this park doesn’t have any new crowd-pulling attractions, this park DOES have an amazing history.  It’s one of the oldest operating amusement parks in the United States (opened in 1908). The rides are all quite old, most of them from the 1950s or earlier and are still operating in some capacity.  The park is VERY small and I’ll be honest - most of the rides looked too rickety for my safety, but the place was a photo GOLDMINE and I am glad to have had the opportunity to visit.  I really wish that more of the American public appreciated places like this so that families could get a bigger piece of yesteryear.  The park made me both happy and sad, honestly, but I’m glad I went.  Check out all of the photos on my flickr stream.

Berlin’s new live album is available for sale now at their shows and will hit retail on July 7, 2009.  You can pre-order your copy on Amazon.  It’s a live album that was recorded a couple of months ago at House of Blues in Anaheim - it also includes some new tracks and a DVD of the show, so if you’re a Berlin fan, you’ll love the new content and the re-tooling of the classic tracks - pick it up at your local brick & mortar music store (do those still exist?!) on July 7.

The news this week of Michael Jackson’s passing was truly a shock.  As much as the media has focused on his life in the past several years, I don’t think most people would have ever dreamed that something like this would happen.  The news was especially chilling to me because over the past few weeks, I have been working with AEG Live on a project for MJ’s shows at 02 Arena in the UK.  While the shows are now obviously out of the question, I feel honored to have had the opportunity to work on something for an artist so legendary as Michael Jackson.  I only had a minor role in the project, but it was a fun one and I’m told he liked what we had been working on.  Just a quick preview below, but if I get final versions of what the outcome of these illustrations were, I’ll post them, as well.  RIP, Michael.  I hope you are in a better place.

Illustrations are property of AEG Live / Goldenvoice.  Do not reproduce without permission.

Taking a big trip with my friend Mike before hunkering down and searching for a new job. Freelance has been floating me well during my break so I wanted to take a bug crazy fun trip before getting back to the hustle and bustle.

We left LA late last night and headed for Vegas where we spent the night for SUPER CHEAP recession busting prices! Now we’re off again and headed for Denver. We should make it there by 11pm.

After a few days in Denver we will head south to Houston (may stop at a select roller coaster destination along the way). It’s a bug trip but we are already having a lot of fun. Check my flickr and Facebook for updates!

I just finished the packaging for Terri Nunn & Berlin’s new album, All The Way In.  The album (CD+DVD) hits store sometime in June, but the band will be playing LA Gay Pride June 14th and that’ll be your first place to pick up a copy.  I had a really fast turn-around on this package, so it was fun to design something slick but so quickly.  I’m pretty happy wtih the way it turned out.

Terri Nunn & Berlin - All The Way In (2009)

On a weekend trip for my birthday up at home in the bay area. At Six Flags today.

I finally got my WordPress for iPhone application to talk to my website correctly and now I can update from the road or what have you.

I’m currently working on two fun packaging projects - one for longboard parts for Loaded Carving Systems and one for Berlin’s new live album. I’m just getting started on both but will post more as I can.

My last few projects I did at Capitol should hit street in the next few weeks an I’m excited to see how they turned out. Beach Boys should look really nice all printed up and assembled and Chipmunks Xmas (my 4th version) is always fun, too.

Star Trek tonight. Go geeks!

Shipped a new package design today at EMI. I’ve been working with my art director on Summer Love Songs, a new compilation of songs from The Beach Boys. This project was fun because we went with a conceptual cover where I got to do a bit of illustration. Although the cover didn’t end up quite the way I wanted because of various hands in the pot, it still looks different than other things we’ve done for The Beach Boys, so I guess I can’t complain.

I took inspiration for this one from old surfer movie posters. I initially wanted to do something super high-contrast with two or three colors that looked vintage, but contemporary. This eventually moved into an illustration style that was playing off of the old Disneyland attraction posters, where color was used very selectively to show dimension and texture. Below, you can see some of that natural progression from one of my first comps to how it actually ended up.

I started drawing lots of different character silhouettes that could be played around with in the space and eventually settled on a few girls and one or two guys that we used to develop the cover.

This project was fast and kind of crazy because it was dropped on the schedule very late, but I’m actually really happy with the way that it turned out. Once this hits street, I’ll post some layout pics from the inside. That part turned out really fun as well.

I have a few packaging/branding projects up my sleeve right now and recent events have me thinking about them… a lot…

Jack In The Box is slowly updating it’s brand at all of their restaurant locations across America and while it will take around 3 years or so to complete the update, the new identity has started slowly popping up all over the place.  I first saw the new ID over at Brand New yesterday, which has a really interesting article with some great photos of the new branding being put to use in the real world.

Today, a friend pointed out a blog post from Joe Duffy over at Duffy & Partners, who were given the task of creating this new brand and identity for JITB.  He has some really interesting photos of the huge signs being manufactured and installed, which is a side of the design world that we rarely get to see, but what’s most interesting to me about his post is his interesting take on his own work.  He mentions how he likes the work that they’ve done and he’s happy with it, but at the same time, he wonders how people in the communities where the restaurants are located will react to the new branding — will they even care?  It brings me to a question that I think a lot of designers ask ourselves from time to time when we’re frustrated.

“Does what we’re doing as designers even really matter?”

In the end, I think the answer has to be yes.  While the nitty and gritty can seem mundane and minute, it’s been proven time and time again that packaging, advertising, and branding can AND DOES really make a difference in consumer opinion of a brand and ultimately can affect a consumer’s decision to purchase something from that brand.  In recent months, a lot of new branding for major corporations has been coming out and not always with great reception.

As you may or may not have noticed, Tropican Orange Juice (owned by PepsiCo.) just underwent a MAJOR brand overhaul, which removed the iconic straw-in-orange image that has been their identity for decades.  The new packaging was simple, plain, “modern.” There was a backlash from consumers.  A major one.  Tropicana announced this week that their pulling the plug on the rebranding and is going back to their old packaging in the coming months.  Brand New has a great article on this, as well - give it a read.

Reaction from the public to the new JITB brand is yet to be seen, but me… I like it… probably won’t make me buy more burgers, though.

I’ve been getting a lot of little projects assigned to me at EMI lately.  Lots of them are for the digital side of things, rather than actual packaging, which I normally don’t enjoy as much, but some of these have been interesting exercises.

One of the things is a digital-only series of b-sides, rarities, etc. that we’re going to put out from many of our artists.  The series is called “Deep Cuts” and will appear on iTunes and the like in the near future.  I made a quick type-only series for these and they read pretty well for what I had to work with, I think.

The next project is a digital EP featuring three tracks from Nat King Cole.  It’s going to coincide with the upcoming release of the NKC Re:Generations album where many of his original vocal tracks have been remixed and reproduced by contemporary artists and producers.  It’s going to be a cool album.  The EP I’ve been working on is a politically driven song sampler that has portions of President Obama’s Inauguration speech interwoven into the music.  It could be pretty cool.  I had to make a quick digital cover for this EP, as well, and it came out decently.

There’s a lot more coming up soon, too.  I have a lot of work to post, but I’ve just moved my entire life, so things are all over the place right now.  I need to pay more attention to my blog and freelance work.  I’ll try to post more soon! In the meantime, I’ve become addicted to the contemporary design ideas for your house at apartmenttherapy.com.  While not everything is to my liking, of course, there’s some really awesome stuff on there.  Check it out.