Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Morning Breath inc.

Today I went to Barnes and Nobel. I never go there usually. I feel like their art section is lacking, and is made up primarily of 3 sections. The first being Graffiti, the second "erotic" art, the last is "how to draw manga" books, but I got a gift card for X-mas, and I figured I would use it. I was looking mostly in the fiction section because fiction is often cheaper than reality, and I thought I could get more for my money buying classics. But this isn't really going to be about how I spent $25. It will be about the fraction of a gem I found in the art section.

There was a book called "Dirty Fingernails", which was all about the artists hand, in creating design projects as opposed to using computers. I can dig it. I am somewhat of a Luddite myself(even though I am typing on a blog right now, that is linked to my facebook, that is linked to my twitter). Sometimes I get tired of the point and click, CGI, & photoshop stuff. I want to see someone work for their art! Or at least if I can't see it, it is nice to know it happened. The book is filled with a lot of nice drawings, some 3d projects, and some other kind of cool stuff, but the main thing that I got from the book was Morning Breath.

There is a company called "Morning Breath inc" from Brooklyn (I believe) who does okay CD designs for some okay bands, but makes AMAZING designs for t-shirts, screenprints, and skateboards! I feel like there is too much goodness to post pictures of a lot of stuff here, so I will just give you the link instead. Just go look around and admire the variation in their work. Sure I like a good CD package, but that isn't what impressed me about Morning Breath inc. This group has done album covers like TV ON THE RADIO's "DEAR SCIENCE", SPARTA's "WIRETAP SCARS", as well as albums by SLAYER, FOO FIGHTERS, and AFI. Think about these album covers and what they look like. Then go look at the T-shirt designs, and screenprints in their shop. It's like 2 different worlds!

Here is what I like about Morning Breath inc. the most.

1. Punk rock style. Everything is messy with that cut and paste look to it. It uses recycled (appropriated) imagery from old comic book style advertisements, girly magazines, and anything else that is heavy on the Ben-day dots.

2. Crazy vivid colors. this mixture of D.I.Y. style and bright colors reminds me of some of the work that I do, or how I wish mine looked.

3. Drawing style. as mentioned previously, I am a fan of the graphic novel style of Daniel Clowes. Well I also very recently went through my old comic book collection and was reminded of how much I love the work of Mike Allred (X-statix, the Atomics, Madman). This work reminds me of Allred's work. Colorful, minimal line work, yet very emotive and realistic.

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