2015 – THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS

Apologies for the crazy length of time since the last blog but been away a lot organising various projects for 2015. More on that later …

Kept in touch via the inescapable Twitter @andieairfix
with #MoodOfTheDay and #AirfixArchives. Twitter feed and follow …

 First … The Holidays. I hope you all had a wonderful time …

Secondly … I’d like to thank everyone who had The Inclination and The Taste to buy Airfix Editions over the holiday period.

Thank You all.

Some Prints and Editions are still available of course …
METALLICA, BOWIE, MADONNA, ROLLING STONES, DEF LEPPARD, LED ZEPPELIN, JIMI HENDRIX and more. Go on … you know you want to … andieairfix.com

To welcome you into 2015, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank my followers on Twitter and those loyal to my blog with a quote I love from the wonderfully anarchic and irreverent world of one of America’s greatest novelists and comic writers.

“HELLO BABIES. WELCOME TO THE EARTH.
IT’S HOT IN THE SUMMER
AND COLD IN THE WINTER.
IT’S ROUND AND WET AND CROWDED …

AT THE OUTSIDE, BABIES, YOU’VE GOT
ABOUT A HUNDRED YEARS HERE.
THERE’S ONLY ONE RULE
THAT I KNOW OF, BABIES
– GOD DAMN IT,
YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIND.”

More quotes at KURT VONNEGUT

A Happy, Healthy, Prosperous and Peaceful New Year to You from Andie Airfix at

 

I will leave you with an image commenting on the tragedy in Paris yesterday. It is poignant, wonderfully direct and implies hope and defiance in equal measure. Brilliant.

 

More very soon on Plans for 2015 … including taking a one-man show to Japan (and maybe more places!)
Finally on the road to publishing a novel
‘ I N V A G E N T S ‘

and a design book entitled – yes you guessed it
‘B*B G#LD*F STOLE MY SUNGLASSES’

Later and soon,
As ever
&ie

Intro

From the first opportunity I had to design an album sleeve, with no knowledge of graphics whatsoever, I instinctively knew it would be an extreme and exciting experience. Thirty years on, the extremes and the challenges thankfully remain.

Many things have changed; the music industry, the introduction of computers and digital recordings, the means to communicate ideas over vast distances in the blink of an e-mail, even the relevance of sleeve design in the music download age.

Some over-riding positive factors remain however; the search for innovation and challenge, impossible deadlines, and most importantly of all – the joyous idiosyncracies of the musicians I work for and the characters who inhabit their world.

I have never felt the need to promote or encourage a particular style in graphics – only a need to communicate with musicians to find a solution which satifies my appetite for experimentation and their very real need to be represented visually in a way which complements their music and their talent. I suppose what I have always worked for is to be comfortable with compromise.

Compromise is too often a dirty word for designers and musicians alike but, by definition it’s a worthy objective. “To yield to reach agreement’, ‘to resolve difficulties’, to ‘give and take’. What better aim can there be in anything we do? There need be nothing negative about compromise – it can provide astonishing results beyond individual egos – solutions unimagined by designer or musician. Pretentious twaddle? Not on your life. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and the ingrediants to create it have always been surprising, exciting and fun.

Behind the designs are numerous stories. There have always been stories. Whether they are about the Thompson Twins, Metallica, Def Leppard, Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin, the Geezers Of Nazereth (who? – just listen), Tori Amos, The Rolling Stones, or my current obsession – The Perils, the stories are the thing which provide insight into how the design process works.

I have reached a point where experience and the joy of how I have achieved a satisfying degree of success should be shared. It’s a strange, hilarious and entertaining  journey, but without doubt it’s an affirmation of the only thing that matters – enjoy your life, and whatever it is that provides opportunity to be creative.

Should we start at the beginning? I think so …. Remember Sector 27 …. I doubt it.