DUTCH UNCLES

The Waiting Room - CHRISSIE ABBOTT

For the fifth chair of the one day design exhibition series The Waiting Room, DR.ME are delighted to present Chrissie Abbott. In our minds Chrissie is one of the most exciting and innovative new illustrators around and we are pleased to say she will be bringing her good friend and equally talented illustrator friend Rosy Nicholas. Chrissie Abbott we should add is maybe best known for her work for Little Boots but this is not the reason we have asked her to be the first female guest at The Waiting Room, her work is intriguing and exciting in equal measures and we have been super excited about what she has sent across. Miss Abbott will be exhibiting some new pieces of work for the exhibition, she will also be creating a live piece throughout the day with a bit of a craft based edge. As ever DR.ME will be creating 50 zines featuring Chrissie's work along with a few bits thrown in by Rosie to!

Below is a link to a talk that Chrissie shot in August for the great people at 'It's Nice That'

Talky-Talk

SHINE COMPETITION PIECE

In August 2010 ME was shortlisted for the Shine 2009 Coley Porter Bell Design competition after sending in a piece of screen printed work completed earlier in the year, (DR's piece went missing in the post clap, clap Royal Mail). After a trip down to London to do a little show and tell with his portfolio he, along with ten other finalists was set the brief of designing the poster for next years competition.

Above is the piece that has been put forward, the concept behind it stretches back to ME's childhood in the Lake District when at Easter hard boiled egg's would be decorated and then rolled (or thrown in most cases) off the town's castle ruins with the aim to see who's egg went the furthest. The winner was seldom the strongest competitor but he/she who possessed the best technique and will to succeed.

In mid October ME will travel with DR of course and some friends to the CPB offices for a cocktail party (sweet) that CPB will be throwing to announce the winner, the winner will receive £3000 and a three month work placement.

If ME wins he will most likely buy 300,000 of these...

Fingers crossed!

BERGKETEN

For those that don't know, DR.ME also dabble in DJing and Live event promotion. We have recently been asked to put on a monthly event at a small but wonderful venue in Manchester's Northern Quarter called the Bay Horse. We decided to call this event BERGKETEN (translating as Mountain Range in Dutch) after DR made a trip to Amsterdam and was inspired by the language, people and the general way of life. For the opening night which is tomorrow the 10th of September. We have arranged for some bands to play live for us, two of which being from Baltimore in the US of A in the shape of FUTURE ISLANDS and EAR PWR (we think pronounced EAR POWER) and the other in the shape of our good friends and much lauded Manchester act WU LYF. We will be DJing a mixture of Hip Hop, Chicago House, a few choice cuts of the best new indie music and some records made by our friends.

We designed the flyers by collaging images of mountainscapes and other mountain based ephemera to create promotional material that was visually exciting and chose purple on a creme stock as we thought this would make it stand out from other flyers (and it was cheaper!).





For the first night we decided to make it extra special and create a mountain based (see where we're going here?) fanzine that would be given away free to the first 50 people through the door. We had a great deal of fun with this collaging pictures of mountains with unusual pictures and images that we had been wanting to use for some time. Special mention should be given to the wonderful Hannah Mort who put her extensive sewing skills to great use by sewing the spines of all 50 zines!

See you tomorrow VIVE BERGKETEN!

Pure Groove Compilations

A few weeks ago DR.ME travelled down to the big smoke to visit the lovely people at Pure Groove after we were informed that the PG3 compilation was ready.

Having listened to it about 1,000,000,000 we strongly recommend you go purchase one either from their lovely shop in Farringdon or from there equally lovely website. You will find great music by the likes of Wave Machines, My Tiger My Timing, Lung Rotter & Seven and of course our good friends MAY68 for just £5 coupled with our cover design which has been hand screen printed by Pure Groove's super talented Caspar Williamson.

Poster for Nation of Shopkeepers / We Have Band & May 68 show.

Here at DR.ME we are always working so when we saw that our good friends May 68 were going to be playing with one of our favourite new acts We Have Band at one of the countries coolest new venues 'Nation of Shopkeepers' in Leeds, we decided it would be nice to create a poster so celebrate this happy occasion. Having sent it to the lovely Ashley Kollakowski who runs Nation of Shopkeepers and having it approved this will be used for the show and hopefully we will be asked to do more posters for the excellent events they promote!

Keep your eyes peeled for further developments!

Here is a video of We Have Band's new song 'You Came Out' which we like quite a lot!

XOX 13

Here is the front cover of the new issue (No. 13) of XOX designed by DR.ME, it is all about Manchester International Festival and has a free preview of an exciting film made especially covering Same Teens involvement in the festival which looks very exciting! To view this issue and the previous issues click here.

Poster for Bring On The Dancing Horses bank holiday bonanza

This is a poster that DR.ME have designed for a free night on the 30th of August (it will after the next chair of The Waiting Room) where we will be donning our DJ hats and taking Bring On The Dancing Horses to Common in the Northern Quarter (just 5 minutes walk from Nexus Art Café).

Primary 1 - Foaming 7" Single cover // Work in Progress

We are currently working on a design for one of our favourite new acts Primary 1 who are on Erol Alkan's label Phantasy, the five concepts above are what we have presented so far so we thought we'd post our process of making the cover for you all to see.

Pure Groove Competition Winners!

We're stoked to announce that Pure Groove have selected the piece (partially viewable in previous post) that we entered to be screen printed onto the cover of their next compilation.

One of our favourite image makers Anthony Burrill illustrated the previous Pure Groove compilation so we are definitely in great company.  Not sure which acts will be featured on the compilation but they are always a must have for any fan of new music and rumor has it that some of our best friends will be on there so that'll be nice!

Massive thanks to Pure Groove!

Pure Groove.

Entry for Pure Groove compilation competition, fingers crossed!

Gavin Watson, Sarah Maple & Frank Sidebottom

This is the poster we have designed for a joint event we are curating with XOX, as we are taking two months off from The Waiting Room we decided to fill the gap with a special one off photography special TWR featuring one of our all time favourite photographers in Gavin Watson, Gavin will be doing a talk at our beloved Nexus Art Café as well as showing a few slides and exhibiting some of his photographs.  As a part of the Manchester International Festival Gavin will also be in the window of House of Fraser doing a live photo session between 11am and 2pm.  We're very excited about this!

This is the poster for Sarah Maple who is going to also be a part of the MIF and will be doing a live art installation.

Lastly this is the poster of Frank Sidebottom who will be doing what Frank Sidebottom does best in the window of House of Fraser also.

The Waiting Room - LUKE BEST

This Sunday saw the fourth chair of The Waiting Room and DR.ME were ecstatic to welcome Luke Best up from London.  Luke brought a selection of his fantastic work up from his portfolio presenting a mix of giclee prints, lithography prints and original pieces.  The pieces looked wonderful and had a really fantastic quality to them.  At around 4PM Luke took to the screen-printing table and did us proud, so proud in fact that we still have quite a few left over.  If you'd like one please send us a stamped address envelope and we will post you a print and a copy of the zine (while stocks last!), post to: 

DR.ME

1.8 The Design House

1 William Fairburn Way

Manchester

M4 1BH

After the exhibition we went for a drink (as is tradition) at our favourite watering hole and had a good chat about how nice illustrators are and stag's sprinting into woods laughing hysterically.  We are in the process of arranging the next guest for the June edition of The Waiting Room but worry not, it will be great!  Massive thanks to Luke for coming up for the day and also to the it's nice that guys for advertising the day on their blog.

Many thanks to Arron Tierney for taking some excellent pictures of the day.

The Waiting Room - LUKE BEST

FOR THE FOURTH CHAIR OF THE WAITING ROOM, DR.ME ARE PROUD TO PRESENT ONE OF THE LEADING ILLUSTRATORS IN PEEPSHOW'S LUKE BEST.  LUKE WILL BE COMING UP FROM LONDON FOR THE SHOW ALONG WITH A WIDE SELECTION OF HIS WORK AND WILL ALSO BE DOING SOME SCREEN PRINTING. AS BEFORE THERE WILL BE 50 FREE FANZINES FOR THE FIRST 50 THROUGH THE DOOR FEATURING THE WORK LUKE WILL BE BRINGING WITH HIM. 

Colour.Block.Party.Screen.

Here are the first of a selection of screen prints that DR.ME will be selling through this blog and at The Waiting Room in the future. This piece was created by taking the Colour.Block.Party. design into the screen printing lab and doing a three colour print onto 203GSM Dupree A3 card.  

Colour.Block.Party. was done as a limited edition run of 10 prints. 

These are available for purchase for £25 (plus P&P) by clicking the button below, if you are not able to pay via the method below but would still like a print please get in touch and we will arrange something.  

More prints to come soon.

Doctoring the Guardian

As the DR is part of the Same Teens group, he was given the job of designing the layout for the two pages that were handed over to them in the Guardian Guide special about Manchester International Festival and more directly about the two days of shows that they are putting on involving Mystery Jets, Esser, Televised Crimewave and Tim Burgess, all for the ultra reasonable price of five English pounds, its selling quickly we believe so get a ticket here.  The two pages in the supplement were done as a teaser to lead people to read the new online new music/fashion zine issue of XOX which the DR has also lovingly lade out, check it out here.

XOX Badge Set.

New badge set for our good friends over at XOX buy one here before they sell out.

xox.

BLINK AND YOU'LL MISS IT.

DR.ME have been working with Oliver Wilson (son of Factory Records impresario Tony) on creating an identity, poster and flyer design for temporary (it will be open for 3 months and then disappear) late night bar BLINK.   The BLINK logo and identity has also been used for a blinking neon sign that hangs over the entrance and for painted onto the walls of the club so as soon as we get some pictures we'll get them up.

Below is the flyer for BLINK, we decided that as so many clubs and bars use a regular postcard size it would be more interesting to have a square flyer.  We had a lot of fun on the project, many thanks to Oliver for involving us.