London Music Works: The Film & TV Theme Extravaganza

London Music Works presents an evening showcasing and celebrating some of the finest film & TV themes from the 70's and 80's. With the help of a live band, expect an audio fairground ride through the world of funky, cult, pop and jazzy tunes.

Below are a selection of retro styled posters and a short animation I put together to help promote the event, which takes place on Tuesday 9th July 2013 at the Islington Assembly Hall in London. Tickets here and more info here

Metro advert

Original storyboard

The Film Music of Howard Shore

The Film Music of Howard Shore is a compilation of film scores from Shore's illustrious career, including; The Silence Of The Lambs, Gangs Of New York, The Departed, The Twilight Saga, Hugo, The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy and The Hobbit.

For the album cover, I decided to focus on his most recent work for The Hobbit, and subsequently chose to look at ways I could incorporate some of the different films he has scored into the same design style. So the mountain-scape hints at the misty mountains of Middle Earth, while the artwork inside features a Boston skyline to reflect the urban gangland of The Departed, and The Twilight Saga is typified by a dark fantasy forest environment.

I developed these images with the idea in mind of making them fit in well next to (and even overlap) one and other, despite the big difference in styles, locations and themes of the films they are meant to represent. Testament to Howard Shore's versatility as a film composer.

Available to purchase from: Silva Screen | Amazon | Play | iTunes

100 Greatest Film Themes: Take 3 - box set design

100 Greatest Film Themes: Take 3 is the third and latest in a series compiled by Silva Screen. This being the first time I had worked on a physical release for this series and decided to revamp the design a little by making it cleaner and more graphical in nature, while also selecting a colourful pallete to help visually distinguish between the 6 chronologically catagorised volumes within.

Available to purchase from:
Silva Screen Records
Amazon

Fractured Politics - poster design

A political poster I knocked together this evening. A statement about our fractured politics at present. No one needs x-ray vision to see this, the cracks are beginning to show and although minor scrapes and cuts can be healed over time this wound needs a strong cast to reset the brake before irreversible damage is done! 

I've put a larger sized version of this poster on my Flickr account >

The Hobbit & The Lord of The Rings - album design / illustration

Album design and cover illustration for a collection of music from The Hobbit & The Lord of The Rings trilogy performed by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

For this release I wanted to capture more of the folky/fantasy elements to Tolkien's work than that of Peter Jackson's big screen adaptation. For this I decided to be a little obscure with the imagery, hinting at, rather than spelling out, some key aspects to the tales of Middle-earth.

The idea for the cover illustration came to me while re-watching the opening scenes to "The Fellowship of The Ring" whereby Gandalf creates an apparition of a ship from his pipe smoke. From here I began toying with the idea of creating a detailed image and hiding subtle elements within it.

"In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees"

Released on 4 February 2013, available from:
Silva Screen
Amazon

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***UPDATE (1st August 2020)***

This CD is now out of press, and not so widely available to purchase any more. However, for those with a continued interest (I thank you), I have made the artwork available for the first time as a print on my Red Bubble profile in various formats...

Stuart Ford - graphic design

Pusher - Original soundtrack by Orbital

Artwork for the soundtrack to 2012 remake of 'Pusher' with film score by the British electronica band Orbital.

The poster for this film focused on very narcotic and futuristic neon cyan and magenta colours, something I chose to reflect in the score album artwork, using a blindingly fluorescence Pantone colour for the disc! Making the art (like the score) very acute and buzzing.

Purchase from here >

Music From The Batman Trilogy

Here is album artwork created for 'Music From The Batman Trilogy'. Much like the score compilation, I tried to reflect on the mood of all three of Nolan's Dark Knight films by representing the gloomy tones and gritty visuals associated with the trilogy.

The main imagery began as a study on towering glass structures and high rise angles, such as you would find in Gotham City. The emphasis being on the skyscraper windows casting reflections of bats swarming in a bleak cloudy sky, and also the aggressive nature of glass being cracked or smashed as a result of conflict and ruin.

The booklet has two alternate covers and unfolds to reveal a poster on one side.

CD available to buy from here: bit.ly/OJr8LF

Super Themes - album artwork

Super Themes is a compilation of super hero theme tunes covering a wide diversity of caped-crusaders from the big and small screen. From Adam West's Batman to The Dark Knight; Superman to Kick-Ass; X-Men to The Avengers… the music that lifts these characters out of comic book pages and onto our screens could be the real source of their super powers.

With the origins of these (sometimes) masked crime-fighters firmly in mind, I chose to focus the artwork for this album on the comic book strip, creating and illustrating a story about the power of one catchy theme tune. I also inadvertently turned an 'average Joe' into a superhuman when he is exposed to the music on this album, acquiring the ability to tear off the restraints of an ordinary working man's life and adorn the customary brightly coloured spandex suit and mask!

Album available here: Silva Screen and Amazon UK