East Dev Music Packaging & Websites

Art direction and design for the first 13 releases of a music imprint I cofounded. My partners and I wanted the packaging to obviously reflect the individual artist projects but also feel like an East Dev release. The lack of realistic budgets also helped dictate the look which often ended up being illustrated.

CD packaging for Jon Philpot’s Bear In Heaven project entitled “Tunes NextDoor to Songs”. The illustrations are by S. Jeffery Sims. Unfortunately no vinyl was produced.

Eastern Developments Music

Eastern Developments Music was a music imprint started by Guillermo S. Herren and myself at the beginning of the decade. We both were influenced by Atlanta / Miami / NYC — essentially East Coast, hence the name — machine funk. I hesitate to use the word electro, only because of the recent unfortunate hipster connotation. The letter forms themselves were based and traced from an old type house catalog because the specimen looked like a graf piece from the late 80s on the MARTA east line.

East Dev illustrations

Some spot illustrations for tshirts and packaging for 2003 East Dev tours and releases. The old portable radios with tape decks were for t-shirts and the guitars for Ahmad Szabo release. Both were done with ink. 

Since the label itself was so associated with electronic music, both my partner and I thought we should emphasize traditional and hand done references as opposed to the then prevalent tech-oriented images.

East Dev Catalog 2004

In all honesty I have forgotten why this catalog was made. We may have been between distributors and needed an item to bring in to meetings. The cover is silk screened on card stock and the interior is black on newsprint, 5 inches by 8 inches, as I recall, french fold with a clip binding. Low rent style as usual for a struggling music label failing to transition itself into the digital era.

At this point in the life of the label I started nudging the typography away from the Akidenz / Glypha dynamic duo to experimenting with system font friendly combinations since I foresaw more of our communications, if we were to survive, happening digitally.

East Dev Posters, various

Various posters for non specific or multiple releases. Top left poster contains a loose hand style — an 80s graf writer perhaps trying to copy Picasso poster letters. Top right poster is a miserable attempt at producing something that is supposed to be cut up, as in, “interactivity”, blah! Both were initial experiments with graphics other than logos for the label and questioned to what extend should the label have a visual language beyond the individual packaging. See Stones Throw for the modern thorough working model.

Bottom posters are 2 color, 11×17 on cheap pastel Kinko’s paper for an Eliot Lipp release. The black is xerography and the red is serigraphy. Other color ways included green ink on blue pastels.

Ammon Contact

This EP sounds so raw and funky that there was no way it could be not be done by hand, especially without ready access to photos. The illustrations are all done with construction paper on a bed of stickie notes.

My only regret was that we were unable to get proper digital repro due to budgets and a crazy deadline. Currently out of print and hard to come by. Printed shots coming shortly, vinyl collection in storage.

EastDev promo CDs

I detest hate CDs. Ya believe it or not we used to mail these things to people. These were basic promo CDs with space to write on. I wanted to establish this as the house illustration style but it never evolved as such.