When we started on this project, we didn’t know the name of the album or even what all of the songs would be or sound like. But we dove in anyways. We had some general conversations about tone and feel — all those sorts of things. I was made privy to a bunch of covers from other bands that the client liked.

And I shared random examples of how I saw things evolving. I had these ideas of very graphic executions. Some geometry. Is it black and white? I wanted to push the limits of the legibility of the type. It needed to be strong and more like a little piece of art than a designed cover, so I was thinking of doing everything by hand. I could see it, for sure, but was it right for the music?

Well, the music started taking shape and continually evolved over the next few months. Scott Solter, visionary producer for The Mountain Goats and Okkervil River and others, was brought in. The partnership between The Struggs and Solter produced some really interesting sonics. There are layers. The songs have a strong sense of place. And there was tangible, weighty emotion, even beyond the extremely personal lyrics of frontman, Randy Bickford (he’s the client). Here’s a short quote re: Randy’s music:

“The opposite of histrionic, Bickford offers a subdued palette rich in the fineness of its distinctions”
–Pitchfork

A visual concept emerged of a heart (and the circulatory system). I was still seeing (forcing) a graphic execution, but one with a real sense of hand — close to folk art even, but with dark colors. We didn’t want this to end up cliché, though, so we moved beyond the heart and started looking at medical imagery of the circulatory system (in humans, FYI). These were really interesting once we started layering and distorting to give the images texture. In a way, mimicking the musical production process the band had recently undergone. We were operating with a tentative title of “Cursoring.”

My initial ideas were still way off. The strong graphic approach I was advocating was not the ticket after all. We continued collaborating.

In the end we arrived at 3 “markers” for the imagery that explained the main qualities of the songs and illustrated these concepts in the following ways:

EMOTION: the circulatory system and other physiological imagery. Think synapses and arteries and stuff
HISTORY: a very old tree. Trees are witness to everything around and often live longer than we do
PLACE: an old map of Virginia, specifically Danville, captures the origin of much of the inspiration for the album

We wanted this all to feel heady and deep and lush and old. And here’s what we came up with.

I have to say it was a different, and really refreshing, process for me. It was not the typical need-it-yesterday project. Randy was a great client — respectful of time as well as ideas. And he really helped push the project in the right direction without creating unnecessary work. We see this small step as the first for the album, knowing we want to expand the ideas into a larger, more engaging piece down the line. I’ll be looking forward to that.

Thanks for reading this far.

And besides, logos are fun. How can we make some concocted graphic symbolize a company’s entrepreneurial spirit while nodding to the owner’s dog’s tri-colored coat and the fact his business was first conceptualized by sketching directly on a surfboard 20 years prior to now? I’m making that up, obviously, but it’s hard to ever guess what will be in the brief for a new identity.

My point, however, was a computer isn’t needed to make logos. Necessarily. Yes, at some point, it has to go through the machine for production. I’m speaking more about the creative process and advocating that Step One not involve a computer, a television, an iPod (or iPad) or Design Annual.

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Chasing Bear Identity

I decided to name my company Chasing Bear a few years ago. It’s a weird, nebulous concept that I ramble on about here. I should point out this company is primarily where I pursue my own personal art projects. I’m also a partner at The PARAGRAPH Project and we do really intersting stuff for anyone who’s interested.

So along with this very loose concept of what “Chasing Bear” meant came an indifference to a logo. “I probably shouldn’t use a bear as a mark for a company who has ‘Bear’ in their name, right?” I let it languish.

Until one day, my wife and I were browsing in an antique shop in the NC mountains. We came across this carved bear that was meant to hang on a wall. My wife told me it was perfect for my home office. I wasn’t used to being cleared for the purchase of mascots. I just wasn’t buying it (the bear). Fortunately, I eventually did purchase the bear. And when I got home, I hung it above my desk.

I eventually realized this bear was MY bear. And I figured out a way to make him say “Chasing” as well. I took a photo, adjusted some levels in Photoshop and then took a print to my local copy shop where I distorted the image. A quick change of the eye, and I was done. It all happened in a few hours.

The timeline for this endeavor was obviously outside the realm of any traditional client engagement. In fact, there was no timeline. Everything happened organically. I realize it’s not practical from this perspective. But my point is not one of time management. I’m hoping you might look beyond your normal sources of inspiration within the timeframe of any given project. And that the tablet or the mouse are put away for a bit. We (and our clients) might be better served if after reading the brief, we just go for a walk. Or visit an antique shop.

Close inspection yields some great results: album covers, original artwork, press-releases, business cards, etc. all show the “hand” quality, regardless of whether the hand happened to be from space or Birmingham. The language used is also entertaining, even though completely serious. Make sure to check out the (ALL-CAPS) press releases and watch some of the documentary running in the gallery space, too.

I designed some artwork for the exhibition. We derived the design from a mask commonly worn by Sun Ra, but turned it into a maze and put in orbit.

And an example of something cool you’ll see… a print block.

The Durham Art Guild is located at 120 Morris Street in Durham, NC.