Hey Look: Nels Cline (of Wilco) Tour Merchandise Design.

Some design projects start in one style and end up as something completely different (but better than the original idea). This T-shirt design for Mr. Nels Cline was one such project.

The original ideas didn’t quite have the punk aesthetic that Nels was after, so after getting some great direction from the man himself, we headed more towards 70s exploitation/revenge films with a Japanese flavor. Major fans of the genre may recognize the eye of Japanese actress/chanteuse Meiko Kaji. One of the goals was to keep this as a one, or at most, two color shirt, so white ink on a black garment worked great for some dramatic contrast. The Japanese characters in red read “fire”, “fur”, “snow” and “blood”. We don’t know the exact significance, but having seen Nels play live, we think those words describe (in part) what he creates with a guitar pretty well. Find out more about this very talented man at his website and Facebook page: www.nelscline.com. NPR also had a sweet little episode featuring Nels for the “Tiny Desk Concert” series.

A highlight for us was getting the payment (we always love when clients pay), but this envelope’s contents  was cooler than most: The check was wrapped inside a music sheet from Nels Cline with hand notations and song development…COOL!

Nels sheet music with notations that we have posted up – I like the section that says “Scale for improvising”…uh oh, watch out.

Please make sure to check out the gallery below for more detail shots from the whole shebang. Dig the threads.