Crystal Madrilejos

Design & Creative

If any of you subscribers out there happened to receive an email today about an old yes, have some. post, I apologize. I admit, I subscribe to my own blog (just to make sure the subscription service is working!) and was quite surprised to find a yes, have some. email in my inbox today considering I hadn’t posted today. For a second, I thought maybe the other elusive half of yes, have some. had finally come out of his shell. Alas, it was only feedburner acting all crazy-like. So again, I apologize for getting you all excited about the possiblity of new etsy stuff? the new toby line? any other various projects? hmm? well, hopefully all these things will be coming to your inbox soon for real!

Fondly, Crystal

Oh! also, I forgot that I was going to post the design for the Cheese on Bread t-shirts. I love love love it! So, here it is:

The past few weeks I’ve been working with the band Cheese on Bread to design their European Tour posters and t-shirts. It’s been a lot of fun because they pretty much gave me free reign over the poster. I’m happy with the end result, and more importantly, so is the band. The poster design came first and the t-shirt sort of followed it’s lead. The band already had an idea of what they wanted the t-shirt to say, so that part was pretty easy. The design of the poster was inspired by the name of band’s new album, “The Search of Colonel Mustard”. My first instinct was, of course, Clue™. The well known board game and movie. It seemed pretty obvious, but I didn’t want to just blatantly rip off the classic movie poster or do something that was overly Clue-esque. So instead, I just tried to get the same feeling and make it cute and poppy. Here are the English and German versions. They are pretty much exactly the same except for the text:




The t-shirt design has yet to be finalized. Once that gets the green light I’ll post it as well.

Fondly,
Crystal

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Press Kit

Awhile ago, I designed a press kit for the band Cheese on Bread. Here is their bio ripped from their website:

Cheese On Bread was born in a university cafeteria, the bastard child of a post-structuralist education and a rather poor dinner menu. After naming themselves in honor of the West’s most dependable dish, Sara FitzSimmons and Dan Fishback spent the rest of 2002 perfecting their blend of cultural commentary and complete silliness. They quickly saturated the West Philadelphia party circuit with C.O.B. pins; simple economics forced them to cut an EP in Matt Keesan’s bathroom.

Their debut was received with critical approbation. Even so, Dan followed his heart to New York City. He stumbled upon a new home for Cheese On Bread in the city’s prolific anti-folk scene. Sara and Dan soon returned to Matt’s bathroom, revitalized, to record a full-length record.

During the sessions, Sara picked up Kevin Kelly in a bar and quickly put his Ph.D. in music to good use. From Kevin’s bass and banjo to Matt’s plinky toy xylophone, new musical textures kept sneaking into Cheese On Bread’s live show until the two boys became Side Of Fries, an official backing band. Like any good side plate, they were soon augmented by a special sauce: Dibson T. Hoffweiler, a Sidewalk regular, who relieved Dan of his acoustic guitar.

Luv-a-Lot Records released Maybe Maybe Maybe Baby in 2004. By then, Cheese On Bread had grown into a six-piece pop-rock outfit featuring Daoud Tyler-Armeen full-time on drums.

Daoud eventually left the band to finish college. After his successor, Gregg Mervine, left for a financially-viable Klezmer ensemble, Cheese On Bread reconfigured into a quintet for an acclaimed 30-state tour in 2005.

These days, Dan, Dibs, Kevin, Matt and Sara swap instruments like children swapping lunches, bouncing all over the stage with joy, disguising Cheese On Bread’s biting critiques of the modern condition with a sincere exaltation of life.

I decided to post it here because I am really happy with how it turned out. It’s nothing groundbreaking design-wise, but it was so much fun to make because the band has so much personality (and style!!!). Cheese on Bread is an amazing, energetic and mind-blowing band; unfortunately, the band is on an “indefinite hiatus” but you can still enjoy their tunes here.


Fondly,
Crystal

I made my first Myspace banner! Spread the word.

myspaceOJ

Rock this banner on your page. Copy this code to spread the word!

Fondly,
Crystal
Down at the bottom of our sidebar, there is a new section of affiliations. Here at yes, have some. we have taken the pledge.

In our professional practice, we will endeavor to:
Learn: Engage in the topic and seek to understand the issue
Think: Make a sustainable mindset second nature
Act: Put our knowledge to use in our daily work
Inform: Share information and build awareness for sustainability
Unite: Spark change through collective strength

All the workings for OJ All Day are pretty much in order. Button Design: Check, Poster Design: Check, Postcard: Check! I still have some ads to do for a couple local publications but those will be easy-peasy. I’m really happy with how everything turned out. I was inspired by those newsprint handouts you get from the grocery store, advertising the specials of the week or whatever. They always have the best high-contrast, lo-resolution photos of foods. At least they used to. I’ve noticed they’ve upped the quality a bit. But you can occasionally find some around the city offering 5 cans of Goya™ Black Beans for $1.00. Here are the finished images:

This is the poster and a modified version will be one side of the postcard.


This is the back of the postcard with a listing of the performers and the times and locations they will be playing.

Fondly,
Crystal

Uncategorized

Who knew?

I swear, I totally was in the process of trying to upload the totes to our Etsy shop today, but then I realized that I was unprepared. It’s a completely easy process if you are fully prepared, which I was not. I’ve decided to wait until I get home so I can ask Andrew his thoughts on things like, How do I figure out how much postage to charge? and Should we accept personal checks? these were decisions that caught me off guard. So many things to consider. Hopefully, tonight that will all be sorted out. I didn’t want to just throw out some numbers and end up underestimating the shipping costs and having to foot the bill!

In other news, I recently worked with local musician Phoebe Kreutz to lay out her new CD entitled Big Lousy Moon. Phoebe is from NYC and she is a brilliant wordsmith and quite a lovely lady. Here is the bio from her website:

Phoebe Kreutz is a boozy floozy with a heart of gold. She sings silly songs about the things she likes best: boys and bars and vikings and tacos.

Growing up in New York’s East Village, Phoebe learned a lot about all these things. She also learned a lot about rhyming from Dr. Seuss and the joys of thinly-veiled social commentary from “He-Man” and “The Smurfs”.

Now she’s all grown up and still loving life in the big city. She gets to sing in all kinds of fun places like The Knitting Factory, Fez, Birdland and The Sidewalk Café. It was there that she found the jolly antifolk scene, which has nurtured and indulged her like a benevolent uncle these past few years. It was also there that she met the boys who would later join with her to become the world’s greatest art-indie-rock band that only sings about animals in the city, Urban Barnyard.

When not rocking out on stage, Phoebe works as the puppet wrangler on the hit show, “Avenue Q”. While there, she grabbed every musician she could get her hands on and turned them into The Phyllis Newman Health Initiative Dancers – a band that blends uptown excellence with downtown crudeness with lively and sometimes dashing results.

But sometimes Phoebe hears the call of The Road and has to set off on wild adventures. She’s played in fun towns like Seattle, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, Albequerque, Flagstaff and Las Vegas. She’s also brought her message of ridiculousness to college campuses such as Oregon State University and Stanford.This year, Phoebe is proud to have played twice in the “Voices for Change” benefit series for John Kerry, sharing the stage with fancy folks like Tom Wopat, Cady Huffman, Charles Busch and Christopher Durang. Also, she’s been honored to have her songs sung by “Avenue Q” stars John Tartaglia, Ann Harada and Jen Barnhart at caberets around the city like Ars Nova and Joe’s Pub.

She has been the recipient of many awards including an Emmy for her work on Sesame Street, the coveted Sportsmanship Award for her team’s pleasantly incompetent performance in the Broadway Show Softball League and $25 in the “Hot Buns” competition at the Rickshaw Karaoke Bar in Seattle.

There wasn’t much actual design work to be done on her CD because Phoebe already had the artwork she wanted to use. She really just needed someone with technical layout skillz ASAP to get it all together before her tour. It was still fun nonetheless! You should check our her musical projects here.

Fondly,
Crystal

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OJ All Day

Remember those creative forces we mentioned last post? Well, i’ve been fortunate enough to have been asked to work on a project with our friends at Olive Juice Music. Major Matt Mason, the brains and brawn behind Olive Juice, has planned an all day festival of “Real Independent Music” here in NYC that will feature 20 bands from the label. Here is a little bit about Olive Juice Music taken from their website ’cause i’m not too good with words:

Olive Juice Music is a D.I.Y. label, studio, and mail-order distributor, based in New York City, interested in helping people who are in the developmental stages of trying to do something with their art. Olive Juice Music is not a traditional record label. The artists associated with Olive Juice take an active part in how their music is produced, financed, and marketed. They in turn receive more of the profits gained from the sales of their records directly, which is how it should be. The strength of Olive Juice relies upon the active participation of its members to share resources and help promote a communal spirit among everyone involved as well as claiming responsibility for taking their art to wherever they would like it to go. Olive Juice Music is about independence and community. And if that doesn’t sound cool to you, well then you’re just going to have to buzz off, mister…

This event will take place on May 19th, 2007 at Cake Shop in the LES (one of the best venues around, in my opinion.) I’m really excited to be working on this. I’ve been brainstorming ideas for posters and flyers the last few days. Last night I met up with a group of OJ-ers (Major Matt, Dibson Hoffweiler, Julie Delano and Casey Holford) to talk about ideas and so far we’ve decided to do a poster, a double-sided postcard/flyer, a special edition OJ button, and there is already a website in the works. (Thanks Dibs!) I already have some ideas mocked up and i’m super happy with how things are turning out.

Here is a list of the bands that are planning on performing:
Dave End, The Best, Frank Hoier, Peter Dizozza, Prewar Yardsale, Dan Fishback, Toby Goodshank, The Baby Skins, Church of Lurch, The Leader, Recording Angels, Purple Organ, Huggabroomstik, Randi Russo, The Wowz, Urban Barnyard, Dream Bitches, Schwervon!, Dufus, Jeff Lews Band

fondly,
Crystal