Excellent Gentlemen

Just Say Yes album packaging

Related:
Excellent Gentlemen: Tiny Taste EP Package
We don't tend to do much music packaging. This is more a matter of circumstance than choice: we've never solicited label work, and independent musicians tend to be about twenty years younger than we are. We're plugged into the Portland music community at one level, though: here, music is rolled into the rest of the creative fraternity, and McIsaac is a member of a nightclub act, which may or may not give us some credibility. At any rate, our pals in the Portland-by-way-of-Albany-NY neo-soul project Excellent Gentlemen asked us to look at packaging their first full-length album. Their music owes much to the 1970s, and considering we were alive back then – and most of their other friends weren't – we thought we'd take it on.

Back and front covers

xG Chief Administrator Steveland Swatkins has a jones for ladies' lips. And sleazy depictions of same were a hallmark of late 20th-century photography (viz. Manarchy), Since this was done on the cheap, he rounded up some of his law school coeds and brought them over to Pinch's main collaborator when it comes to working on the cheap: Richard Spottiswoode, a British ex-pat without a Green Card, who works for bottles of Samuel Smith's. He had some old GAF slide film in his freezer, which he paired with a vintage lens and a layer of gauze to invoke a seventies backyard bacchanal.

The rest of the work was done by Herb Lubalin's famous (and according to our young friend X, overused) display face, ITC Avant Garde, whose latest release contains all of the freaky ligatures its creator intended. Typography ProTip: Avant Garde is meant to be agorophobically letterfitted, and requires a fair amount of handwork and customization. And yes, that is trompe l'oeil wear and tear you see, in the proportions of a CD, not an LP. High-larious, right? Okay, have it your way. We make our own fun.

image

Interior and disc.

Our goal was not to make something that looked old, but rather something new that referenced the music's ancestry with affection. Attention to detail is key in an exercise of this type: it's meant to be funny on one level, but also good. It can be too easy to tend toward the twee, especially when you cut corners. Here, the exterior brings to mind 1970s aesthetics, but using contemporary design principles. And we didn't stretch the retro theme too much into the interior: the colors are period-appropriate, but there are no afro wigs or sunglasses for the band members; and the custom lettering job for the disc references the period without being slavish. It's also a bit of an inside joke: the album name isn't even on it, though if you think about it, it just says "yes".

image