Time for the latest installment of “Cleaning out the Bookmark List”, so let’s get to it!

• Stumbled on this incredible blog post on FontFeed while reading another of my favorite blogs – HardFormat.org – it’s a rundown of the album art on some of the newest releases with special attention paid to the font and typefaces used.  I know this something that Will Schaff pointed out as being very important in his selections for the 2010 Album Cover Design Contest, so give it a read.

• HardFormat also had a link to this incredible new documentary “Taken By Storm” that is being made about the legendary album cover designer Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis, the team that designed famous covers for Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Bad Company, Yes, Scorpions, Peter Gabriel and many more.  Check out the trailer, it looks fantastic, or visit Storm’s site.

• If you like Def Leppard you’ll love this set of blog posts by Andie Airfix, the designer behind all of their album covers since Pyromania.  Check out the original designs, etc.  It’s going to be part of a show at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame opening in December of 2010 and running through 2012.  Speaking of Def Leppard, Hipgnosis designed their “High N’ Dry” album cover.

• Love Black Sabbath?  Then you’ll love this!

• While not technically what we’d call a fake band (since they actually recorded & released music) Sex Bob-Omb does have some famous members (no pun intended).

Hey it’s that time again, time to clear out ye olde bookmark list and share some cool odds and sods with you!  So here we go -

• How important is a band name?  The NY Times ran an article on this subject, and how even classical groups are getting creative with their names.

• If you want to check out a really cool graphic design project, check out Michael Deal’s exploration of The Beatle’s work through infographics.  It’s fascinating.

• Don’t believe that you can get people to believe in a fake bands, albums or concerts?  Guess again! Even the art community is getting involved – whether it’s creating fake bands or record stores!  So imagine it and they will come!

• Sleeveface rocks…it simply rocks.  I dare you not to agree.

• Change the Thought is a great design blog, but I particularly liked this article on gig posters.

• 7 Deadly Sinners are 7 artists who among other things seem to like to create gig posters for fake bands!

• Nylvi’s Best Vinyl Cover Art of 2009 is worth a look!

• Cool video about the packaging design for MGMTs new album “Congratulations”.

• frizbee pointed this Wired article out to me.  A must read for Lost fans.  BTW frizbee I’m still working on getting a hold of them…I’ll keep you posted.

• Congratulations to our good friend John Coulthart (last year’s guest Album Cover Design Contest judge) for winning the 2010 Spinetingler Best Book Cover Award.

• Michele Catalano wrote a great post for her Sound System column on True/Slant.  She writes about “Albums I Forgot I Loved” and talks about how she created a fake band, Pond Scum, with her sister and a few friends.  Unfortunately the band broke up over their fake direction, but it goes to show you how many people create fake bands based on their love for a real group.

That’s it for now.  Until next time…

With our Figment Concert Poster Contest in full swing I thought I’d clean out the ole bookmark list and give you some relevant links to check out.  So here it goes -

1.  Having trouble figuring out how to create an authentic rock poster?  Here’s a tutorial.

2.  Minneapolis truly is a rock poster design mecca with Lonny Unitus, Aesthetic Apparatus, FLORAFAUNA and Chuck Ungemach among others calling it home.

3.  It’s also great to read about a band like Os Tornados, a six-piece 50’s & 60’s inspired rock band out of Porto, Portugal, whose keyboardist prefers to draw or paint the band’s posters as a way of translating the band’s analog esthetic. While you’re at it check out their music, it’s great.

4.  And speaking of other great rock poster design mecca’s Portland, OR is no slouch either!

Well that’s it for now.  We have some great interviews coming up, so stay tuned.  In the meantime, if you have an article, site or other piece of interweb flotsam jetsam that you’d like to share let us know about it by posting it as a comment.  Until next time!

I’m an internet pack rat, scouring the interwebs for stuff I think will interest, inspire, and entertain all of my Figment brethren.  The only problem is that I often fail to bring this great stuff to your attention!  So today I’m cleaning up my list of bookmarked internet flotsam and jetsam, and posting links to some stuff I think you’ll really find interesting.  So check them all out when you get a chance.

Pitchfork has a great new featured called “Take Cover” that looks at album cover design by talking with the designers themselves.  In the first installment, they interviewed William O’Brien about his design for Grizzly Bear’s newest album “Veckatimest.”  Check it out.

In the “Do Not Try This At Home” file I found this beauty of a story!

I’ve always gotten a kick out of parodies, especially song parodies and this one by Cody Johnston of Cracked.com is a terrific send-up of The Decemberists.  So give “Hampshirefields” a listen.

And in the “We Are Not Alone” file I found this great Guardian.co.uk column by Michael Hann on…you guessed it “Imaginary Bands.”

I first read about Arik Roper’s new exhibit at Fuse Gallery in NYC on Arthur.com, but I found even cooler stuff on his blog.  Looking forward to seeing the gallery show.

Love feedback infused rock n’ roll?  Well then pray at the altar of Blue Cheer!

Well that’s it for now, but if you’ve got something you stumbled across that you think would be a good fit – let us know and we’ll work with you to get it up on the blog.

I was mucking about on the interwebs the other day and I came across this great Aussie blog devoted to album cover art called Sleevage.  From the early 60’s to the digital artwork of today, Sleevage spotlights album cover art with a dash of the cover’s history and a little of their own take on what makes it special.  From Andrew W.K. to Iron Maiden and XTC they’ve got it all.  So when you get a moment check out Sleevage, it’s a great source of inspiration for your own designs.

Spärhusen, the so-called “almost greatest band from Sweden” were almost at the top of their game when their plane the “Swedish Fish” crashed on July 25, 1974.  For 35 years fans have wondered what might have been.

Well, wait no longer, because Spärhusen is back and in a far-reaching conversation with Figment News, keyboardist Olf Nystrom brought us up to date on band’s past, present and future.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Spärhusen is a mock-u-mentary web series from actress-writer-producer Ileana Douglas, and co-creators/co-stars Rob Mailhouse and Todd Spahr airing on My Damn Channel.   The program also co-stars Keanu Reeves and Wallace Langham.

In addition to the web series, Spärhusen’s long-awaited album, “The Best of Spärhusen”, will be available on iTunes and MyDamnChannel this fall.  You can also follow Spärhusen on Twitter and Facebook.

So if you’re looking for more fake band inspiration make sure you watch Spärhusen!

I was reading the NY Times this morning when I ran across this obituary for rap DJ Mr. Magic.  I’ve always liked old school rap, but I must admit I’m no rap historian and I’d never heard of Mr. Magic or his radio show.  What caught my attention more was the role he played in getting rap music on commercial radio.  I had no idea.  I follow hip hop music a bit, but I must admit not as closely as rock.  Mr. Magic was clearly a key player in the early days of rap, but my ignorance regarding his contributions goes to show you that there are many people (DJs, tastemakers, journalists, publicists, etc.) who contribute to a genre’s success with little or no recognition beyond the most avid followers.  So the next time you see another band on Figment succeeding in an area you feel you carved out or helped promote, don’t be jealous, know you did your part to make it happen and in doing so created more opportunity for your existing bands or ones you’ve yet to dream up.

R.I.P. Mr. Magic

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said

“Music is the universal language of mankind.”

He also said,

“It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion.  Such wounds always leave a scar.”

Only one of these quotes from Longfellow was directly referencing music, but you could easily see where both could apply.   While it is true, music is the universal language of mankind, only some of us speak it eloquently and the rest are left only to appreciate those who can.

I was struck by this very fact, when I read a quote by Kieron Gillen in regard to his Image comic “Phonogram”,

“It’s my love letter to music. It’s an honest letter – I’ve been shacked up with her for long enough to know that she’s a bitch with a cruel tongue and will happily destroy people on a whim – but it’s still hopelessly in love with her.”

Hmm…sure sounds like Longfellow and Gillen are talking about the same thing…right?  Music can be a bitch, but an intoxicating one that many of us will never master.  So how do we express our love for it?  Well, it depends.  Some of us become avid fans, others write about it, and still others use it as a form of inspiration to create other forms of expression.  Phonogram is all of those things put together.

So what is Phonogram and who is Kieron Gillen?  Phonogram is a comic book created by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie and published by Image Comics.  Gillen and McKelvie have described it as “Hellblazer meets High Fidelity“, and it’s deeply inspired by music in much the same way the fake bands you create on Figment are.  What’s really interesting about it though is that it manages to express through words and pictures what makes us all so passionate about music – its’ magic.  Gillen and McKelvie describe it in this way,

“Music is magic.  You know this already.  You’ve known this from the first time a record sent a divine shiver down your spine or when a band changed the way you dressed forever.  How does something that’s just noises arranged in sequence do that?  No-one knows.  It’s just…magic.  Everyone knows that.  It’s just that some realise that it’s more than metaphor.”

Clearly these guys have a passion for music, but yet they aren’t musicians.  Instead, they are writers and artists who convey their passion for music in a medium best known for superhero’s and villains.  Hey, maybe we are talking about the music industry after all?  But seriously, Phonogram may not be music, but it is without a doubt inspired by it, and in its own way creates a little of its’ own magic.  With that in mind we thought it might be interesting to find out more about what goes into creating Phonogram and how it applies to what we’re doing on Figment, so we tracked down Kieron Gillen to ask him a few questions.

Figment News:   Tell us little bit about Phonogram and how you got involved with the project.

Kieron Gillen:  Phonogram is pretty much the story of me deciding not to become a music writer.  So instead of actually letting all this stuff off a tiny drop of mental-fluid at a time, I built up into an enormous septic sore which I lanced in one go. It’s distilled putrefied thoughts on music.  And jokes.  Always jokes.

I had the idea as something I’d like to do in comics, met Jamie and somehow talked him into it. I was very lucky.

FN:  What are Phonomancers and Retromancers, and how does magic play into the Phonogram storyline?

KG:  We use magic as a metaphor for whatever music does to people – it’s a device to highlight the effects. So rather than Dungeons & Dragons Harry-Potterisms, we have these low-level, often very subjective effects.

The example I normally use is the second issue in series 2. The basic plot involves a guy walking into a club and a record plays. Suddenly, time freezes and he’s suddenly confronted by an Ex who forces him to relieve a painful memory involving her and the record. Effectively, he’s been cursed by the record. Of course, we’re using it to highlight that gut-crunching moment we’ve all experienced.

FN:  The artwork is terrific.  Is that all the work of Jamie McKelvie?

KG:  In the first series, yes. In the second, he was joined by Matt Wilson – who Jamie worked on his own Suburban Glamour with – as colourist. Colour adds so much to it, y’know? As well as the main story, we also have back up strips in each single issue, where we’ve bullied as many of our friends and peers as we can to provide. It’s just a big cross-section of everything we love in comics.

FN:  In keeping with the theme, the cover art for Phonogram’s first series “Rue Britannia” is all based on real album artwork from Brit-pop bands of the 90’s.  For the second series, “The Singles Club”, each issue was influence by a single from more current bands like The Pipettes, TV on the Radio and The Long Blondes.  Was that part of the plan right from the beginning and were the bands involved at all?

KG:  The plan we have is cheerfully rough, and normally conceptually re-jigged from series to series. For the first, we wanted to have a deconstruction of all these album covers, which tied into the whole story being a deconstruction of Britpop. For the second, set in a single club night, we were inspired by club-flyers for each, highlighting each member – and the story itself was normally inspired of one single by a band in the year the story’s set (2006). Sometimes it’s a very tangential inspiration, admittedly.

FN:  Your second Phonogram mini-series “The Singles Club” is seven single-issue stories, each following a single Phonomancers experiences in the same club on the same night.  What was it like combining all of these interlocking stories?

KG:  Hard work, in short. Bloody hard work, in less short, but more rude.  Basically, it involved a lot of flow-charts. Who’s in the toilet right now? Who’s on the dance floor? What’s playing? Since it’s quite intricate, what I actually did was hold most of it in my head – like a hologram of a story – and write it all as quickly as I could. And then when it was all done, I hammered it until it actually stuck to a time-line. There’s some subtle subjective cheats in there to help it too.

Jamie does a lot of work too – as he’s got the pages done, he’s forming an enormous chart of each scene in time order:

So yeah: bloody hard work.

FN:  You have a background as a music journalist.  How useful was that past experience when creating Phonogram?

KG:  It provided the thinking. When I said I didn’t become a music journalist earlier, what I meant was a full-time day job. As it was, I stayed in the zines and underground mags like Plan B, so it was just practicing analysing and thinking and obsession: all the things which power Phonogram.

I really consider Phonogram as music journalism in narrative form. The inspiration coming from a set band or song is at the key part of it. I mean, the last short story I wrote is just inspired by a conversation with a mate when dancing to Once In A Lifetime. Music is easy inspiration for me.

FN:  You also work as a gaming journalist.  Was working as a comic book writer something you always wanted to do, but journalism paid the bills?  Or was it just a natural extension of your work as a journalist.

KG:  I’m a bit mental. All the writing sort of forms a whole in my head. It’s all about processing reality. If you’re looking for a theme across my work, the obvious one is about humans’ subjective relationship with art. That’s always been there.

FN:  You’ve now bridged out to work-for-hire for Marvel.  How does that differ from creating a book on your own?  And is working with some of the classic characters of comic books harder than creating your own?

KG:  Phonogram’s ludicrously hard, so almost anything is actually easier than doing it. It’s a great thing to have done first, because it steels me for even the most strenuous of tasks. Getting to play with all these splendid Marvel characters is a joy.

FN:  On Figment, our users are required to rely on their imagination to create every aspect of their fake bands, from back-story to album description and song titles. Any advice for our budding imaginary rock impresarios on how best to create an imaginary musical character?

KG:  I used to play fantasy bands a lot. You can see a bit of that in Lloyd, in the second series, who spends most of the time trying to recruit people for his post-Pipettes/Spankrock concept piece.

I’d always looked at the world of music, and see what’s missing. What combinations make sense, but don’t exist. The final time I played bands, our concept was the – still awesome, sez I – Mogwai/Wu-Tang cross. That still sounds fun. Someone do it.

FN:  Clearly music influences your work on Phonogram, but is it also an inspiration for your work for Marvel?  And if so, what bands are currently influencing you?

KG:  I tend to root around for an album to fit the mood of the piece. The Thor stuff has a certain epic melodrama heart-on-sleeve-ism to it, so I’ve dug back to the Arcade Fire’s Funeral.

Ares is this snarly, acerbic brutally smart aggression, so I dug out the Sisters of Mercy Vision Thing.

S.W.O.R.D. Is a lot of The Go! Team’s first album.

FN:  You’ve also created comics purely for the web.  How does that differ from creating a book and do you think that’s where everything is moving?

KG:  Interesting and huge question. I think it’s certainly part of the future. I also think with the web, the fetishistic power of objects become more important. People are less interested in just the thing, and more the totemic object. You start creating physical comics as art objects. Stuff like the Asterios Polyp which came out is a fantastic thing. The physicality counts. Writing for the web, you start thinking about the lack of physicality, and what that means. And I’m not giving an answer to that, because there’s so many.

FN:  Graphic design plays a big part on Figment, because it’s often the fake band’s album cover that grabs someone’s attention first.  How big a part do you play in working with Jamie on the artwork that goes into Phonogram?

KG:  We love the covers. They’re probably the single element of Phonogram which we’re most satisfied with.  We’re proud of huge chunks of it but the covers are…well, they’re the closest to actually what we want things to be.  The britpop deconstructions of the first series set the fairly dark, critical tone of the first series.  The Club-Flyer/portrait approach of the second focuses in on the importance of each lead.  And by having two totally different approaches, we’re trying to show that we’re about trying new stuff and pushing.  There’s been an increase in record-derived covers since the first Phonogram series – which some people, complimentarily, have said was due to us.  For the second, there was no way we were going to do that again.  Culture has to move forward, and covers are the first attempt to contextualise the art it contains.

FN:  Have you ever created a fake band?  If so, tell us a little about it.

KG:  All the bands I’ve been in have been pretty fake bands. I mentioned the Mogwai/Wu cross – which also did a lot of things with suits and fake-on-stage-arguments, which was meant as a critique of the lad-stuff kicking around in the 97-98 period this was happening. We were cheery wankers like that.

But I schemed up a few. That band originally started as a one-off punk band, aiming to make a 20 minute set of Nation-of-Ulysses-esque stuff, somehow blagging onto the best support I could find, doing that one gig and never doing anything ever again. Just to get it out of my system.

Actually, it was always a bit of a kick when I saw a band who broke through who seemed to basically be what I was dreaming up. It was cheery justification – and also, a quiet pleasure in knowing there’s people out there who love pop music in the same way.

FN:  What advice would you give someone who has an interest in creating comics but has never done it before?

KG:  Do it. It’s the cheapest visual medium on the planet. You go from where you’re sitting now and publishing your first web-comic in a handful of clicks. And it’s best to start as soon as possible, because the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll get good.

FN:  See any bands on Figment that would be good fodder for a comic?

KG:  Actually, Phallic Acid reminds me of the first band I was ever in. Mid-teenage punky-metal thing called Phallusy.  Yes, we were very mid-teenage.

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If you’d like to find out more about what Kieron and Jamie have planned for Phonogram check out their blog by clicking here.

I thought you might all find this article on the guy who designed the cover for the new Pearl Jam record “Backspacer” interesting.  Goes to show you how a designer can always apply his/her work to a new medium.  Dan Perkins, who writes and draws the political cartoon “This Modern World” under the name Tom Tomorrow, was tapped to create the cover art for the new Pearl Jam record after his cartoon strip was dropped by the Village Voice Media chain of alternative weekly newspapers.  Not only has the cover been a boost for his career (leading to the design of concert posters for Pearl Jam as well as the cover of a special issue of Spin Magazine which features the band), but it also got him his job back at the Village Voice.  So if you’re looking for some inspiration I suggest you give this NY Times article a read or check out his cartoon “This Modern World”.

Larry passed this great feature from the Word Magazine’s website along to me the other day and I haven’t stopped playing around with it since.  It’s a map of locations where album covers were taken.  You can click on an album title on the right or just hit the random generator and it will provide you with the location of the cover shoot and other interesting tidbits on the album.  For instance, did you know that the rear cover of AC/DC’s classic album “Highway to Hell” was shot on a piece of closed highway in Staten Island?  Staten Island standing in for hell?  Go figure.

I think it’s a great source of inspiration and a great way to peer behind the curtain to see how some of these now legendary images were created.   So give it a try and if you’ve got the info add one of your favorites!  And if you get a chance check out Word Magazine’s website – it’s a great read too!