The new website for the Whigs is alive and kicking!  Designed by yours truly and coded and mastered by hero and friend Lucas Smith.  Go over and check it out!  See when the Whigs are coming to your town and do yourself and favor and go see them!  Best rock band in America!  Go see it!

Lots going on in GingerGroupDesigns world right now.  Definitely no time to take pictures and make posts but I have been working with some awesome, awesome bands!  Here’s a short list of who I’ve been working with… keep an eye/ear out for them and go see them play and buy their merch!

Shapiro (from Virginia)

Kevin Devine (from Brooklyn, you know)

Get Back Loretta (from San Diego)

the Songs for Kids Foundation (if you live in Atlanta i expect to see you at Smiths for 500 Songs for Kids!)

Oblio (from Nashville)

Cinemechanica (from Athens, yeah!)

Twin Tigers (from Athens, yeah!)

I’ve also joined two new bands (OQ and Coyote Bones) and have been working on two of my solo projects (Council and Decomposer)… will keep you updated about all that as well.

Soon!

xoxo

j

Well, I’ve promised new Loose Nerve’s stuff but its moving a little slower than planned. No worries though. It will happen soon enough. I also have loads of new stuff to add to the portfolio which will be happening soon. 

Stay tuned!

We are working hard on lots of new Loose Nerve’s stuff.  Don’t worry!  We should have the store all restocked and ready to go with new stuff next week. In the next few weeks we will also be announcing some subscription deals through the store for 12 months worth of stuff!  Also, we will be selling stuff at a few holiday markets in Athens, GA!  Saturday Dec 6 we are at the 283 Bar in downtown Athens and then the next Saturday (Dec 13th) we will be at the Big City Bread market sharing a table with Satisfactory (cuties!).

Stay tuned and stay close!

…And here we are. This website has been meaning to happen for a long, long time. Thanks for your patience. This couldn’t have happened without my buddy/pal/idea-bouncer, Lucas Smith! Give Lucas a big ’round of applause.  

The website is simple. Below this blog entry is a sampling of some of the cds, lps, 45s, t shirts, hoodies, etc that I’ve designed in the last few years. There’s plenty more to show you so I will be adding to the portfolio often.

To your right is the Loose Nerve’s store. I started Loose Nerve’s a little over a year ago and make new clothing and accessories whenever possible. The store will be frequently updated with new limited edition, signed and numbered goodies, so check back often.  The store is set up with paypal so its easy, simple and secure to buy stuff, if you so please.

In addition to Loose Nerve’s items there are (and will continue to be) all kinds of different things that I’ve worked on, whether it be visually, audibly or some other ‘bly.  

If you need to contact me, just click on the contact thingie, you know how this works!  

You can click on different tags for each of the items in the portfolio and just see the albums I’ve designed or t-shirts or what-have-you.

So stay awhile, come back often, and we’ll see you soon.

Right Away, Great Captain! is Andy Hull’s 17th century sailor-obsessed musical alter ego.  ”The Eventually Home” is the second album by RAGC and its amazing, just like “The Bitter End” before it.  Just as the RAGC records have a common theme and characters, I wanted the artwork to be linear, too. Here’s a little trivia for you… What is the color of the inside cover?  A: Its the color of US dollar bills.  I had a ton of fun with this record and am looking forward to the third installment???

All of the text in this album (and in “the Bitter End” as well) is lifted and rearranged from old texts.  There are no computer fonts used whatsoever.  

Just like we did for their first album, the Whigs wanted to have a shirt based on the album artwork for their second lp, “Mission Control”.  Both records were designed the legendary Chris Bilheimer (R.E.M., Green Day, Neutral Milk Hotel, Widespread Panic and countless others), who is both a great friend and design mentor to me.

One of a handful of shirts I designed for Tokyo Police Club earlier this year.  These guys are super sweet and put on an awesome live show to boot.  

“Suicide Queens” was the first hoodie I designed for Manchester Orchestra. The design is based on the artwork for their first ep, “You Brainstorm, I Brainstorm, but Brilliance Needs a Good Editor”.

Believe it or not, this shirt was originally designed for exclusive sale at Hot Topic in the mall.  After it had been in the store for awhile, we changed the colors and took it on tour.  I can’t remember what the original colors for Hot Topic were.  

I’ll be honest with you, I tried to sell this design to a handful of bands before somebody went for it. It’s definitely in my personal top 5 favorites. I based this design, roughly, on a Circle Jerks shirt that I saw in a book. Since then I’ve sought out as many Circle Jerks shirts as I can find, they are all amazingly designed.  

I only printed 13 (i think) of this shirt.  Kevin’s drummer, Mike Skinner, and I decided to surprise Kevin with these shirts for a show they were playing on April 20th, 2008 (4-20 dude!).  It was a total last minute, spurt-of-the-moment decision but it was well worth it.  The design is based on an amazing Jim Croce shirt from the late 60s or early 70s.  

These photos were taken by my wife, Lily (she’s taken almost all of these photos), and these are so beautiful that I had to put our dog, Ziggy, in there as well. I designed this shirt early one morning while on a 2 month tour with Manchester Orchestra and Kevin Devine.  

These are pretty self explanatory… These are from the first set of shirts/hoodies that I did for Kevin.  There are several others in this set that will end up in this portfolio sometime.  Stay tuned! Read the rest of this entry »

This is the video for “Like A Vibration” by the Whigs.  They rule, totally rule.

The drum head that i designed and made for Julian is front and center at the beginning of the video… watch and enjoy!

I met the Jealous Girlfriend (who totally rule by the way!) when they were touring with Kevin Devine. We all immediately fell in love (or at least I did with them) and they asked me to do a shirt for them. To this day I think I get more comments on this shirt than any other. I like to think its because the Jealous Girlfriends are so awesome. They in turn hooked me up with Nada Surf. Thanks! Please check out the Jealous Girlfriends… you won’t be disappointed. We recently turned this design into a tote bag.  

Jason Stollsteimer (the Von Bondies) is an old friend of mine.  We got back in touch with each other last year just in time for me to help him with some stuff for his new solo project, Jason & the Hounds Below.  Lucky for me, I’ve also gotten to work on some stuff for the newest incarnation of the Von Bondies. Jason rules and if you don’t know that already, you need to check it out… 

I just did 5 designs for Butch Walker.  These are 4 of them.  I had a the pleasure of meeting Butch a few weeks ago.  He’s one of the nicest and most genuine guys I’ve met in a long time.  Looking forward to working with him more in the future.  

“Funderwater” (I know, I know) is one of my favorite shirts that I’ve done for the Whigs.  Dudes are always telling me that it makes them feel like they are 10 years old again.  I feel pretty good about that.  

I was so excited to be able to work with a metal band when this came my way. I was especially excited when i found out that Divine Heresy consisted of former member of Brujeria and Nile (2 of my favorites). I love this hoodie and I hope I get to work with these guys again.

“Dick Krum” is based on a kick drum head that I made for Julian (Whigs drummer) about a year ago. The kick drum head art was made out of Wrigley’s gum wrappers (the silver part) and lots of Mod Podge. He’s on his second version of the head now. We made these shirts in black with white ink and white with black ink. There are also a bunch of circular stickers with this design.

I love this shirt. This design is based on several aspects of the artwork I did for Manchester Orchestra’s full length debut “I’m Like a Virgin Losing a Child”. The ivy design is based on the textile pattern in the background of the album’s back cover. The ivy on the backside of the shirt is then colored to resemble the woman and the television on the album’s front cover. I believe we did 2 or three different printings of this t-shirt on two different colors. Only the grass green version that was printed in Athens has the tiny lettering in the ivy on the back. There was a sticker made with this design but they were messed up at the press so there are only a few that we were able to give out on the spring 2007 tour with Brand New and Kevin Devine.   

The printer told me that they wouldn’t print this wrap-around design so I decided to do it myself.  By the time we stopped making these shirts for the Whigs I had printed something like 600 of this particular design. This design like most others from this time (2006-2007) was printed at my house without a press or registration. Each of these t-shirts is a little bit different. Unfortunately, the pictures don’t really do it justice, I don’t think.  I love these shirts, but am extremely thankful that I don’t have to print them any longer.

These shirts have been printed many times, many different ways.  The first several batches were printed on my kitchen table without any registration in 2006.  I designed the bird and eggs so that they could fit on the branch and nest with a pretty big margin of error but still look good.  There were also several limited editions of posters using the same art and printing method, just with different papers and colors.  This shirt was later printed by a print shop (other than my kitchen) for tours during 2007.  

This 1-color screenprinted poster was used for promotion for a show at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA in October 2008.  Poster is 15″x19″.

Right Away, Great Captain! is a solo outing of Andy Hull (Manchester Orchestra).  I designed and printed these posters (limited edition of 40).  They are 10.25″x20″.  This 2-color design was printed with out a press or registration marks.  I also designed a limited edition t-shirt for the cd release show that the poster commemorates.  If you are not familiar with Right Away Great Captain, I recommend that you get acquainted asap!  I designed both of the records so far.

This is an ongoing project… I play bass in Iron Hero and am also in charge of making our stuff look good. Each of these packages is spray-painted along with the cds.  I’m constantly making these things, so if you want one, get in touch.

Manchester Orchestra and Annuals cover each other’s songs on this seven inch, so I thought that their art guy and me should do our own versions of the other’s cover art.  My wife took the picture of me and our dog, Ziggy (replacing the goat or whatever that is on the Annuals cover), out in the woods one day.  Once I had the artwork for the covers I laid it all out.  The labels on the vinyl are made to look like the Favorite Gentlemen labels but with the cover stars taking place of the gentleman.  

This is still available for purchase from Favorite Gentlemen Recordings.

Same front and back covers as the CD but with a different insert.  The insert is a nice big 24″x12″ full color 2 sided poster.

I did a series of watercolors for this project.  The pen/ink parts of the artwork are based on some photos of the Acid Park where some of the “What’s Left Behind” film was shot.  I’m praying for a 10″ vinyl release of this ep someday.  

Jeremiah (MO’s drummer) found a box of old pictures a few years ago and wanted to use them for this record.  As it turns out, all of these pictures fit together in a story.  I took the picture story and ran with it, adding other pieces into the layout to give the characters some personality.  After the album, the admats, the singles, and everything else i must have gone through a dozen rolls of masking tape.  

 This is the first work I did for Manchester Orchestra.  Rumor has it that a kid in Florida got these queens tattooed on his arms.  Needless to say, I was flattered. 

Cinemechanica came to me and said, “We want a T Shirt that has tanks riding clouds”.  Voila.

Yet another shirt printed on my kitchen table.  I’m pretty sure it was absolutely frigid in the house, too. These are for my old punk band, Dream Girls.  There’s a slight possibility that i have a few larges left of these shirts… let me know if you want one.

Jet By Day did two tours with Hey Mercedes.  On the first tour we gave Mike (guitar) one of these shirts.  No more than 6 months later, we were on tour with Hey Mercedes again and we had to give Mike another one of these shirts because he had worn the first one out by wearing it every day!  I love this shirt, but not nearly as much as Mike does.

I printed these on my kitchen table at about 5:30 in the morning, just in time for the band to drive down from the Carolinas to pick them up for tour.  Good Times.

One of two Nada Surf t-shirts from spring/summer 2008.

I still have bird seed crumbs in my scanner from this project.  Bain Mattox is the husband of Amanda Kapousouz (Tin Cup Prophette), he’s an accomplished musician with a heart of gold.  All of the handwriting on this packaging was done by me.  I had to lay out the writings and the bird/flower cutouts upside down on the scanner and then pour bird seed over that.  Needless to say, it took many tries before it was all lined up and layed out to fit perfectly in a 5″x5″ or so square.  It was well worth the efforts.   Read the rest of this entry »

Dream Girls was a punk band that I played bass in during 2006/2007.  This was our debut ep that was designed, screenprinted and released all in the span of less than 48 hours.  The printing was done on my kitchen table at the time without the use of a press or any registration.  I’d sell you one but we sold all 49 or so numbered copies.

This was a ton of fun.  First of all, let me say that i think Amanda Kapasouz (Tin Cup Prophette) is amazing. Her first full length is a stunning record and i was thrilled to be able to do this project with her.  It’s an album of traditional Irish songs and it rules.  We had a super low budget and decided to do a one-color screen print. I printed all of these in my kitchen at the time, with no registration marks and no printing press.  The sleeves are printed on an extremely cool packaging from a company in Oregon that i can’t remember the name of.  The inserts are screen printed as well, on vellum.

We created a record label for Amanda with this release called Subway Grime Recordings.  The Subway Grime logo was designed by yours truly.

When i did this 7″ design back in late 2002 or early 2003, i was just learning how to use photoshop again (i had used a super early version at a journalism camp in high school) and really was clueless.  i didn’t own a computer and was on what was pretty much the Jet By Day communal pc in their house.  It was a learning experience and i’m still proud of the final product.  There are, of course, some things that i would change if i had to do it over, but I still think that its a pretty cool and unique 7″ package.  For the record, I’m a little embarrassed about the oversight on the label.  i haven’t made that mistake since.

Jet By Day was from Athens/Atlanta, GA from like 1995 till 2005.  I designed merchandise, sold merchandise, tour managed, bro’d down (haha), drove the van (sometimes), took care of (always), and video documented for the band from 2002 until 2005.  Some of the best days of my life.  I’m currently working on a documentary film about the 3 years that the 5 of us toured together.  I designed many shirts, stickers, a 7″ and posters over the years but my favorite work that i did for them was my first proper CD packaging.  I had been designing 7″s and tapes since high school but “the Vulture” was my first project that got real distrobution and “real” printing.  I’m still proud of this layout and package.  This album was released in 2005 by Future Farmer Recordings.  It’s an incredible record.

Here we have the official release of “Steamy Scandals & Love Handles”, the greatest recording ever recorded. The photographs were taken by the Wal-Mart photo team.  I had a little bit more time to get this artwork together and make sure that everything was perfect.  This was released in 2005.  I was greatly honored to be able to work with the legendary Die Slaughterhaus Records on this package.  If you don’t know Die Slaughterhaus, you should.  I hope i get to work with them again.  If you don’t have this… contact me and i can make one available to you…

If you have this tape or have had the honor of hearing it, then you know of Rump Posse’s supremacy.  I think we made about 90 of these tapes.  I stayed up all night one very long (but exciting) night in 2004 at Kinko’s. The cover watercolor was done by Brandon Betts (better known as “Ace”).  This is quite possibly the greatest tape ever made.  This is one of the first times that my nickname “Joystick” was used with or instead of my real name.