Openmind designs
Items created by by design alter-ego, Openmind
This little beauty was released today apparently – from Black Dog Publishing. The exhibition opens to the public on Friday too…
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I finally got my hands on the thing that consumed most of my waking hours for the first 6 months of this year today… the Ninja Tune book I slaved over. I was up at Black Dog Publishing sorting out some things for the forthcoming exhibition and a shipment arrived from Italy, soaking wet, with the card board split down the sides in some cases! Hilariously the delivery man placed them beneath a poster proclaiming “Properly packed parcels please” 
They only had one copy of the hardback edition which comes with the XX box set because all other copies are being routed to the factory where it is being put together but it is a beautiful thing to behold. Also in the pictures you can see some of the exhibits stacked up ready for the opening on the 20th. The paperback version should be in stores by the end or the month, 192 pages, priced £19.95, if you see one, have a flick through and find out what the label has been up to for the last two decades.
Opening in 2 weeks time will be Ninja’s first bonafide exhibition in the UK to celebrate the publication of the book, ‘Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats & Pieces’. Black Dog Publishing have generously offered to host a little showcase of the design and imagery that went into it and, after designing the book, the box set and all the paraphernalia that goes with it, I’m curating the exhibition too. It will feature lots of original artwork, models, posters, sleeves, flyers and promo bits from across the years.
It opens Friday, 20th of August at Black Dog’s gallery space, 10 Acton St. London, WC1X 9NG between 12-5pm weekdays and is only on for a month. There will be a special pop up shop on Saturday 11th September where there will be several special items for sale, hand picked from the Ninja archives as well as the new book.
The sold out MOOG T-shirt design I did earlier in the year is now back in stock at Chalk Brighton with a very limited repress of the Charcoal on Black original version. But adding to the range is a new off-white on white variant for the summer months – be quick, these sold out pretty fast first time round. Also check out their ‘SOUL’ shirt too.
Battered and badly folded proof – see foot for scale
Test mock up, not laminated, not foil blocked, shrinkwrapped etc…
Got a nice piece in Music Week this errr… week.
A 3 page feature on deluxe boxsets where I’m
interviewed along with members of Think Tank
(who are helping Ninja make the box) and
Brighton’s Modo alongside comments by Peter Saville.
Ninja Tune XX 4xCD promos are in – all watermarked and going out to specific people, even I don’t have one! This is roughly half of what people who buy the box set will get, music-wise. The box is in production as we speak and Ninja are going to release several 12″s off the back of it plus a DVD.
Exclusive box set 12″s (only buyers of box set can get these – the individual code in each box must be given to get them – free! That’s right, free)
a. Pop Levi ‘Blue Honey’ (A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Mix by The Amorphous Androgynous – full 16 and a half minute version)
b. Coldcut ‘More Beats & Pieces’ (United States Of Audio Remix), Flanger ‘Psy Sound’
a. Roots Manuva ‘Witness (Modeselektor Remix)’, Coldcut ‘True Skool’ (Zomby Remix), Stateless ‘Ariel’ (Rustie’s Pentagram Remake)
b. DJ Food ‘Dark Lady’ (Alix Perez Remix), The Herbaliser ‘Something Wicked’ (Roots Manuva Dub)
12″s for General Sale
a. Two Fingers ‘Fools Rhythm’, Zomby ‘The Forest’,
b. Toddla T & Ms Dynamite “Want U Now’, Diplo ‘Summers Gonna Hurt You (2010 Remix)’
a. The Bug ‘Tune In’ (Version), Poirier ‘Get Crazy’ (Mark Pritchard Vocal)
b. Dj Vadim ‘The Terrorist’ (Gaslamp Computer Killer Remix), Coldcut ‘This Island Earth’ (Joe Goddard Remix)
a. Amon Tobin ‘Lost & Found’, Amon Tobin ‘Foley Versions’ (Kronos Quartet Interpretation)
b. Roots Manuva ‘Dub Styes’ (Michachu Remix), DELS ‘Eating Clouds’
a. Spank Rock ‘Tell Me What It Look Like’ (Todd Edwards Remix), Fink ‘Pretty Little Thing’ (EL-B’s Digital Remix)
b. Dark Sky – Leave, Shuttle – Lion
All in individual XX house bags – there will also be one more special 12” doing the rounds with a couple of mixes of a Ninja classic on either side…
From the forthcoming Ninja Tune XX box set – only 1 more day to pre-order it for under £100. This is my poster, a visual discography of Ninja, Big Dada, Ntone and Counter up until this point. The blue lines are just there to show where it will fold, should be 70 x 80 cm at least.
This has been consuming my time for the last 6 to 8 months – mainly the book but recently the box set and all its contents.
The set includes 3 hardback books: one is an exclusive hardback edition of the forthcoming Ninja Tune – 20 Years of Beats & Pieces book by Stevie Chick, published by Black Dog Publishing and designed by yours truly.
The second houses 6 CDs – 2 of them only available in this set, with 90% new and exclusive material specially made for this compilation. There is also a large format 24 pg booklet with a download code for a 7th CD’s worth of material (I can’t say what it is yet but it’s excellent).
The third book contains six 7″ singles with exclusive material not on the CDs, two posters – a Ninja family tree by Nigel Peake and a complete cover gallery by me – and 20 stickers. All this is housed in a heavy slipcase with foil blocking.
Go to the Ninjashop to pre-order at a limited cheaper price until July 8th and see the full tracklist. I’m pretty excited to hear these:
Big Dada Sound ‘Signs’ *
Eric B & Rakim ‘Paid In Full’ (Switch meets Coldcut Remix) *
Diplo ‘Summers Gonna Hurt You’ (Diplo 2010 Remix) *
Quincy & Xen Cuts Allstars ‘I Hear The Drummer’ (Tunng edit) *
DJ Vadim ‘Terrorist’ (Gaslamp Computer Killer Remix) *
Roots Manuva ‘Witness’ (Slugabed Remix) *
The Bug ‘Skeng’ (Autechre Remix) *
King Cannibal ‘The Grind & Crawl’ *
Coldcut ‘Autumn Leaves’ (2010 Budapest Mix) *
Coldcut ‘True Skool’ (Zomby Remix) *
Clifford Gilberto ‘Deliver The Weird’ (Dorian Concept Remix) *
The Bug ‘Poison Dart’ (Prefuse 73 Broke Moog Version) *
Roots Manuva ‘Witness’ (Modeselektor Remix) *
Roots Manuva ‘Join The Dots’ (Cut Chemist Remix) *
Kid Koala ‘3 Bit Blues’ *
Pop Levi ‘Blue Honey’ (Amorphous Androgenous Remix Edit) *
Coldcut & Hexstatic ‘Timber’ (The Orb Remix) *
DJ Kentaro ‘Paid In Full’ *
DJ Food ‘African Rhythms’ (Tom Middleton Remix) *
DJ Food ‘Dark Lady’ (808 State Remix) *
Herbaliser ‘Something Wicked’ (Roots Manuva Dub)
Two Fingers ‘Bad Girl’ (The Bug Dub) *
DJ Vadim ‘Bang it Out’ *
Wagon Christ ‘Sloth Gets Paid’ *
This has been in the pipeline a while, I think I did the design last autumn but had been collecting the contents for longer. Chalk Brighton, the brainchild of old friends Dean Ricca-Smith and Simon Skevington, is a new company specialising in limited edition T-shirt prints with a difference. One of their debut designs spelt out SOUL in bold letters entirely made up of titles of their favourite soul records and was a big hit. They plan to continue the series and I submitted my entry in the form of Moog. Not an obvious follow up but Chalk isn’t an obvious kind of company.
The tracks within my design either refer to records with Moog in the title or famous songs which feature the Moog somewhere in the kit list (did you know that the bassline to Donna Summer‘s ‘I Feel Love’ was played on a Moog?). Anyway, the shirt is big on design but minimal of contrast so it blends together nicely when printed and is actually a lot more subtle than these photos suggest. Also you have to love the attention to detail with the names on the neck tag Get them while they’re hot…
a bit of work I did this weekend… and the follow up
click for larger versions
So, my new EP – The Shape Of Things That Hum – should finally be in shops today (Jan 11th) after a pressing plant mistake led to the whole lot being repressed, missing the Dec 14th release date.
You’ll find a poster wrapped around the vinyl and inside is another of Henry Flint’s amazing illustrations – done specially for this release. He only provides the line work though and I colour each image in Photoshop using a combination of photos, transparency and colour balancing.
It’s a painstaking process involving many layers, minute mouse work and multiple options and variations. I did several screen shots of the work in progress as I went this time (see below) and I’d estimate it took roughly 2 weeks of intense work.
It wasn’t helped by Photoshop bugs flattening the image for no reason after saving a session. I’d wake up the next morning to find a whole session had been lost and I had to use Time Machine to go back a stage to un-flatten the thing.
Another setback was ‘the orange juice incident‘ after a weeks work on it in the evenings on holiday. That seems an age away now and I’m at work on the final installment, due out around May. Not sure what the cover to that will be but I have plenty more of Henry’s work available to use and then there’s the album cover…
There will be a Shape Of Things Reader mix up on Soundcloud later this week featuring music from the EP plus influential tracks I was listening to whilst making it and other favourites from 2009.
Well, it’s part 2 of the trilogy that hits the web today – not the streets as projected because of a manufacturing cock up that saw the 12″ run pressed on lightweight vinyl. The physical format will now be available in shops from Jan 11th 2010. But, for those that can’t wait there is a place to order it and it should arrive before Xmas if you hurry – the Ninja shop has copies and will be open until Friday the 19th.
For a fiver you get a 5 track 12″ housed in a full colour inner sleeve, wrapped in an A2 double-sided poster cover, all held together by a snugly fitting plastic sleeve. Not only that, you get a code that lets you download all 5 tracks PLUS 3 remixes by Mr P (aka ex-Fooder PC) of ‘All Covered In Darkness’ – not a bad deal by any means. Alternatively, if you only do the digital thing then the 8 track package is available from all good download stores from today.
Lots going on this week; as well as the 12″, last week’s ‘Now, Look & Listen’ AV mix with DK there’s the first part of my Warp mix – Blech 20.1 dropping on Tuesday, a mixed guide to the new EP’s contents and a second Warp mix that are both nearly finished. I also have a very special post scheduled about one of the artists I sampled on the new record. You wait for ages and then 6 come along at once…
