What led you to start designing posters for bands?
Michael: For me, I always knew I wanted to be involved with
art on some level so while going to
College I was in a few bad bands and quickly realized I enjoyed designing the
posters for the shows more than I enjoyed trying to play music.
As far as how Dan and I got together, doing posters…Dan can tell you
about that.
Dan: I guess it started with me trying to teach myself
screen printing by making really bad pop
art-type prints in the basement of a defunct artists’ cooperative. I
met Michael when we both started working at Planet Propaganda. We started
printing
together by making poster designs for one of the art directors’ bands,
started doing posters for visiting bands and it just grew from there.
With bands, that you design for, is there a close
collaboration?
Michael: For the most part, the bands we usually
do work for are on smaller indie labels and there
are little to no hoops for us to have to jump through to get the work done.
Dan: What it comes down to is we do posters for bands
that we like and hope that they like what we
make.
Michael: Yeah. Sometimes, however, we’re actually
hired by, let’s say a record label, and while we
may not exactly love the band we’re doing a poster for, we take pride
in making a poster that would make that band look a hell of a lot cooler than they
actually are.
What’s the technical process you go
through once a poster is ready to be printed?
Dan: We usually
work digitally so we make our films manually in Illustrator and output them on an
oversized digital plotter onto vellum at the local copy shop. Those prints
we then use as our films for exposing the screens we print from.
Who are some of you influences are far as
poster design goes?
Both: WPA, Saul
Bass, Warhol, Rauchenberg, Art Chantry, Jeff Kleinsmith, Modern Dog/Ames
Brothers, Hatch
Show Print, Yee-Haw Industries.
Do you both enjoy bouncing back and forth
between the relative, low tech, hands-on posters you create,
and the high tech work you do online (as well as branding and advertising)?
Michael: I personally
don’t enjoy working on web stuff as much as print. While I know the
design process is essentially the same, I just hate knowing that I’ll never hold it in
my hands. There’s something so satisfying about a printed project that even the slickest
of websites will never have.
Dan: I (and I can probably speak for Michael too) am a bit of a
Luddite. I work on a computer because it’s
the media I’m most familiar with. If I could, I would work with my hands
and make posters all day instead of sit at a computer.
Michael: Yes, this is true.
What are your roles at Planet Propaganda?
Both: We’re both designers.
What are some of the projects that
you’ve worked on for Planet Propaganda and which ones
pushed you further along as designers?
Michael: Projects
at Planet are all over the place. One day you’ll be working on a
catalog for a huge
sporting goods company and the next you’ll be working on a CD
package for a local band. So it is rather hard to pick just one that
has pushed me further a
long as a designer, being that they’ve all had an effect on me
in one way or another. I would say, however, that any project that
forces me to work with a
media that I’m unfamiliar with or a subject matter that I
wouldn’t normally even think about, those are the projects
that really push me.
Dan: Yeah,
exactly. We’ve begun to do a lot of TV advertising lately
which is really a lot of
fun because I don’t have the faintest idea what I’m
doing. You just kind of have to jump in and figure it out for
yourself and I really enjoy that.
You’ve done the branding
and website design for the company you work for (Planet Propaganda).
Do you feel that this is one of the more difficult tasks to
take on? It’s one of my least favorite things to do because of the pressure
of wanting it to be perfect on every level.
Both: It
was difficult and, honestly, nearly impossible. Meaning that to
try and distill what a
company does, and it’s soul in general, while making
everyone happy…yeah, not so easy when you’re so
close to something, and so emotionally committed
to making the design perfect.
Do you feel that with all the
different media that is involved with a client’s brand
it is harder
to stay on top of everything? Does it require more of a team
effort?
Both: It
isn’t all that difficult to stay on top of everything as
far as design goes. Meaning, all the same basic
design principles span all media. But yes it does indeed require
more of a team effort and you find that it is essential to be able
to convey what your thoughts
are to a number of different people who will be working in various
medias to push your concepts.
How has the current economy affected
the work you are doing now? Are clients less inclined to
allow long research periods?
Both: As
far as our poster work nothing has changed at all, for obvious
reasons, and actually the work we do at
Planet hasn’t been changed either. Planet has a very set way
of taking on projects and the economy really doesn’t have an
effect on the way we work. Planet has
always been about keeping things efficient and streamlined. The big
guys are crazy good at the business end of things and have done an
incredible job keeping
everything "as is" even as we go through a tougher time with the
economy. They’re smart kitties.
What can we look for from you in the
months ahead?
Dan: Huey
Lewis has actually signed on with a local label here in Madison so
we might be doing some cool Huey
Lewis posters in the near future. Sorry kids, “The News”
won’t be with him this time.
Both: Posters,
a shit-ton of posters. Oh, and we just bought a 4-color t-shirt printing
thing-a-ma-boob. So, yeah, we’ll be clothing your family soon.
You’re excited. We know.
Thanks guys.
Aesthetic Apparatus
Planet Propaganda |
