Event poster for Singapore-based music collective, Darker Than Wax (DTW), and their event at NY club venue, Jupiter Disco, in spring of 2022. Concept, illustration, and design by me.

This is a recent album cover for MoFunk Records artist, Moniquea. The album was released digitally, on LP, and as a cassette. One of the most notable artists in the modern funk scene that’s been growing over the last decade and a half, Moniquea had a much deserved write-up towards the end of 2022 on the official Grammy website

I was contracted to do hand lettering for the title of the debut album from NY-based artist, Silka. After many pages of iterations with a Japanese fude-pen (brush pen), searching for the brushstrokes with the right feel, I was finally able to settle on a version that fit the photo and overall look the artist wanted.

While I usually go through a process of creating an entire image (sometimes including lettering) from scratch, it was refreshing to focus solely on lettering to compliment the beautiful cover photo. The icing on the cake? Having the artist express how pleased she was that I “got” what she was envisioning.

Album art designed and illustrated by yours truly for the head of LA’s Mofunk Records, XL Middleton. He asked for some funky motel sleaze vibes to match this 4-track EP of house-infused funk, and that’s what was delivered. Hand drawn on paper and colored on the computer.

Official event poster for the Modern Funk Fest DJ Summit 2020 in LA. I was super hyped when the organizers for this event contacted me. Admittedly, I was also bummed that I wouldn’t be able to witness the lineup they had.

For the concept, I thought it would be fresh to have the lineup look like a stack of cassettes, allowing me to use different hand type styles for each artist. The process of figuring out different styles and how the letters will work together is incredibly gratifying. If something doesn’t sit right, it eats away at me until I’ve solved the problem. Oh, and for my detail heads, I made sure to change the cassette player name from a popular Japanese brand to “Homy” ;) Design should be fun, right?

*Mofunk, Hobocamp, and Modern Funk Fest logos not designed by me.

One of my favorite DJs in Tokyo (formerly Fukuoka), Stupid Kozo, was organizing an event for Montreal artist, High Klassified (Fool’s Gold Recs), and had contacted me about making an illustration for the flyer he was creating. While I don’t recall if the event materialized (it was scheduled for late 2019 - early 2020), the project was still fun. At the time, I was visiting LA and luckily had some free daytime hours to knock the project out.

After digging through some press photos of the artist, the shot with a chihuahua in a baby holder was the most interesting, so I drew out a few versions. When I draw with the fude-pen (Japanese brush-pen), I often avoid doing a preliminary sketch; since I started using this style of pen, I’ve enjoyed the somewhat raw character that drawing freehand with it yields. After settling on a version and getting the green light to add color in Photoshop, Kozo also asked if I could add some text as well (btw, hiragana, katakana, and kanji are all super fun to draw/write once you’ve got the forms down!).

Japan-based recording artist, Submerse, contacted me to create a poster for release party of his album, “See You Soon”. He wanted me to utilize the album cover photography by Repeat Pattern, but with illustration; so, I used a fude-pen (current favorite) to draw both a version of the tiger featured on his cover, as well as some tiger stripes for the background. I maintained the color palette of the original artwork as much as possible, only making minor adjustments to get the poster to pop. As with most of my work, I did the layout and typesetting too. It was nice to take a break from my usual color palettes and work with more muted, monochromatic hues. This sort of perspective shift is great for adding variety to the formulas we sometimes stick to!

In early spring of 2019, the head of Bastard Jazz, a boutique record label in New York, had inquired about some help with contacts for a summer tour of Japan that year, which quickly snowballed into me illustrating and designing these riso print posters, flipping their logo into a circular design with both English and Japanese katakana versions (which I had turned into a hanko stamp as well as printed on shirts for the tour), organizing events in Tokyo, Shizuoka and Osaka, contributing a song to the B-side of a limited-run white label 7” they pressed, and even joining the tour doing live and DJ sets.

The entire process was exciting, daunting, and incredibly gratifying to apply multiple skill sets to help the label and artist make their tour a reality. A LOT was learned, mistakes were made, and successes were had.

For the front illustration’s inspiration, I had looked at a ton of Japanese graphic artists from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. While the final product wasn’t meant to emulate those styles, I think it informed the image to a degree. The matchbox was based on an actual matchbox that I had saved from a sushi restaurant shortly after moving to Japan – proving that bit of ephemera to actually be useful, even if years after the fact. As with every project, there are some hiccups. Even though there was a mixup in my application of Showa-era katakana type layout/orientation, that was a valuable experience to learn from. Consequently, I now know to doubly confirm how locals will read anything I design that has incorporated hiragana/katakana (the two phonetic written character sets in Japanese). Mistakes lead to knowledge :)

This is the backside of the Potatohead People & Bastard Jazz Japan Tour 2019 poster that I had designed and illustrated. I really enjoyed the process of riso printing these, thinking in terms of only the two colors available at Irregular Rhythm Asylum in Shinjuku San-chome. The subtle imperfections in registry were really interesting and gave a nice handmade feel to the posters. Check out the front for the illustration I made!

An event poster that I illustrated and designed for a club night at Black Flamingo, a Brooklyn music club run by the acclaimed DJ/production duo Soul Clap. In typical suit, I wanted to make a poster that would go above and beyond the average flyer that most wouldn’t think twice about after seeing once. The DJ lineup are all seasoned selectors, garnering attention via radio shows on stations like Dublab, Lot Radio, NTS, and other outlets. I came up with the idea of some alien creature in its own psychedelic, fantasy realm playing music simply for the joy of it. I enjoyed working with a complimentary color scheme that was a bit more limited than other projects. Concept, illustration, and design by me.

This was an editorial for one of Metropolis Magazine’s New Year’s editions. They were doing an article regarding the traditional end of year TV show, Kohaku (Red & White), which often features mainstay artists from past and preset who “compete” against each other in a series of performances. The article was musing on what would happen if current artists, like rising Japanese rapper, Kohh, were featured on such a family-friendly show. I ended up having the rapper’s tattoed hands and grill creeping out from under the blanket of the kotatsu, or classic Japanese winter heating table, ready to shake up the traditional New Year’s paradigm.

This was a fun editorial illustration for Time Out Tokyo to be used in an article regarding food shows on TV. My contact thought it would be funny/interesting to have someone watching a food show while eating, so I got to work to make something that fit the bill. For people familiar with Japanese food culture, you might find it odd that someone would be eating ramen (one mindset) while watching a show with sushi (another mindset); they’re two dishes that don’t often exist under the same roof.