4th Annual Smash Palace Motorcycle Show!

Just whipped up this poster for the next Smash Palace bike show... Johnny did the illustration. Thanks Johnny! You might recognize these faces/motorcycles? I'll print a limited edition run of these which we'll sell pretty cheap at the show (and maybe also from the bar?).

But yeah it's on the 5th of November this year... which is also Guy Fawkes! So it's probably gonna be a pretty sweet after-party, nudge nudge wink wink. Shakin' Evil will play at it again and so will Greg and Lil' Luke's new band, Slippers & Raisins.

Might even have the Norton goin' for this one?

Cheap Thrills Magazine (book?)

I've been buried in *other things* things lately and motorcycles haven't had a look in, as they say. Tried to get my norton tank sorted for the Smash Palace show but failed when at about 3am the night before I realised that the tank cap I had wasn't gonna fit. Anyway I thought I'd chuck this project up here cause it's what I've been busting my chops on lately...

This is Cheap Thrills, essentially a music zine/journal which was proposed to me by Erin Kimber and which I've (probably foolishly) jumped on board with as sort of an editor, but more designer/printer... and also somehow; collator, binder, trimmer... sheesh, good idea!? Nah it's been awesome, even though it almost killed me getting it ready for the launch on Saturday! One of my students, Luke Shaw, has worked tirelessly on this with me also and he deserves a decent handshake and a few free beers.

Smash Palace Motorcycle Show Posters

Haven't done fuck-all bike related lately except this! The poster for the next Smash Palace Motorcycle Show. I designed and printed this sucker on our risograph at the Ilam Press last week. This year the show's on out at New Brighton and it's on November the 21st.

I'm planning to have the Norton done for the show, not that I expect it to be winning anything, but just because it's a good deadline! I don't really have much to do, just make decals, get tank and side-covers clear coated, and make mounts for the front of the tank. Should be easy enough, just need some TIME!!!

Article on 'Colors' magazine

Found this fairly informative write up on 'Colors Motorcycle Magazine' here today. It was a very short-lived (1970–71) thing and is really hard to find these days. I've cited this publication before in terms of precedents for Head Full Full of Snakes. In particular the use of color, the kind of dilettante compositional quality, but also the fact it was a very grass-roots publication that aimed to document something that wasn't going to be dealt with elsewhere, and was made by the people who it was also essentially aimed at... rather than a larger publishing company. It didn't last long but was, I believe, influential in 'Easyriders' being started, and obviously that became fairly huge (while turning into something quite different too, in my humble opinion!).

Interview on Design Assembly

Here is an interview I just did for the folk at Design Assembly... in which I spill some beans about the whole Head Full of Snakes business...

designassembly.org.nz

(Photo: Self portrait of Stuart and me at the Ilam Press at about 2am in the morning while printing issue #3)

Smash Palace show TOMORROW!!!

The perfect way to spend that Haloween hangover – the 2nd Annual Smash Palace Motorcycle show is on tomorrow! Last year's ruled and this one's looking like it'll be even better. I'm gonna be there with a stall selling our latest issue and some t shirts we had made that feature the cover illustration. You'll also be able to get these Smash Palace T Shirts (above) which I designed... with a nod to both Danny Lyon and Windhand.

2nd Annual Smash Palace Motorcycle Show

I've just done the poster for the 2nd Annual Smash Palace Motorcycle Show. Last year's show was pretty fucking awesome (see photos of it here), and this year's will no doubt kick some ass too. It's being held in various gardens around Paddy Snowden's amazing old house in Linwood this year. I went and checked it out and it's an amazing setting for a bike show.

Anyway there's risographed posters going up around town (hopefully?) and a bunch at Smash Palace for any of you who want some. Also we are planning to get some big ones screen printed... which we were gonna do last year, but ahhh yeah...

Smash Palace Bike Show THIS SATURDAY!!!

I've been a bit shit at posting here lately cause I've been sooo stupidly faaarking busy! But hey, ya'll better know about this... THIS SATURDAY at 12pm is the Smash Palace First Annual Bike Show – it'll be like all our previous bike nights rolled into one mental extravaganza. A bunch of the guys have built new bikes for this show and you can be sure there'll be some weird twisted excuses for motorcycles there. So yeah: 12 – 3pm at the Pallet Pavilion, and then we all pack up and head to Smash palace for the afterparty... which, if the HFoS party there was anything to go by, will be a total fucking knees up!

This (above) is the second poster I did for this event, after the venue was changed just after I did the first one. Free risographed posters available at the show...

Smash Palace 1st Annual Bike Show

Poster I designed and printed for the upcoming motorcycle show at Smash Palace in November. Going to drop a bunch of these off at Smash Palace today, any of you who wants one should be able to get one from there. But I'm really hoping to get some bigger ones screenprinted too... although these bigger ones will be likely to cost a little bit...

Smash Palace Bike Show Poster

Finally printed the posters I'd designed for the 1st annual Smash Palace bike show on the risograph today. Really hoping to get some big ones screenprinted. Anyone know a cheap screenprinter? Might give it a whirl myself but retardedly fucking busy at the mo...

Fragments 2

This has been sitting here for a while 'cause I've been wanting to write something decent about it, but I thought I better photograph it and give it back to Jimi, who got it from Trademe recently.

What it is is a photography/poetry magazine published in Christchurch in the late 60s or early 70s I'm guessing, there's no date on it. At the back it says "Published by Fragments and printed by Designprint Press Limited, Christchurch", and that's it for info really.

Jimi's dad may know one of the photographers involved and I was kinda keen to see if I could talk with him about it.

Initially I thought it was a bike mag when Jimi told me about it, but yeah it's not, it's just this issue – issue #2. The first half of the issue is this "photographic essay" of what appears to all be the same MC. Mostly patches aren't shown but there's an Epitaph Rider in there on the fold out poster that comes with it. I presume they're all Christchurch based?

It'd be cool to know more about this as the design and printing are noteworthy for it's time too. I have to admit I'm not as interested in the poetry part (which I haven't reproduced here), but it is interesting that someone wanted to put all this stuff together? I've been reading the new book on gangs here, 'Patched', and in it the author talks about the relationship between the early MCs here and the hippy counter-culture movement. I wonder if this is an example of that kind of cross-over? It'd be good to get a date on this sucker!?

New Zealand MC 'calling cards'

 

Jesse Schrader sent me the link to these a little while back. They're all from Cam Stokes website here. I'd put some examples of the same thing from some American clubs/gangs up here last year (see em here), and Stuart and I had used these as a point of departure for our design of HFoS #1, most obviously the cover. They're interesting things these cards. I don't totally understand the point of them, are they like business cards? Seems strange when you're trying to essentially operate 'outside' the law, or 'undercover' in some way? Actually it has just occurred to me that when I joined the Norton Owners Club they sent me very similar cards. They had they same sorta line like "You have just met ______" and the bit there where you are supposed to out your own name. The point though with these cards is, I think, to help spread the word about the club and to maybe attract new members. Why would a 1% outsider club wanna do this? Maybe they just liked having cool cards... I can get that. Stuart and I made some for ourselves (see em here). I particularly like the Vikings one, although the Hell's Angels one with it's "You have just been seduced by..." is pretty good too. I'd never realised until seeing this stuff either, that the in the Highway 61 logo the skull is actually eating the road.

Now THAT'S graphic design!

Through a strange series of events that I won't bother boring myself with here I came across this today. And shit I really really like it. It reminds me a lot of those gang calling cards I've put on here before here, and which Stuart and I referenced with our own cards and with the cover of issue #1. I really dig the lo-fi economy of this sort of thing, and the suggestion that there's some code I don't quite understand – some voodoo and dark magic. It feels like you need to have been initiated to get this, which I think is very intriguing. I can't speak to the content as I haven't read it and I don't have any interest in poetry sorry. I actually can't stand poetry. I know that makes me a bit un-civilised, but there you go...

The National Grid @ RAMP Gallery

Here's some photos of Jonty and I (and Amy) putting up our show 'Design and Designers' in Hamilton over the weekend. We're now making issue #8 of The National Grid as a catalogue to this show. We have 2 weeks to get it to print!... and then I can get back to thinking about my bikes!

I've decided I'm definitely going to start a separate blog or Tumblr or something for my design related work/research. Talked to Jonty about us starting a National Grid one again (we actually ran one really briefly before making the publication together – it was a disaster though). So yeah from now on (well, from soon) HFoS will be just mostly motorcycle related. Although obviously I'll be looking at, and for, overlaps etc...

Busy... (TNG exhibition and HFoS award!?)

Been too busy to give much thought to any bikes at all lately because I'm working on an exhibition for the 'other' publication I make – The National Grid. The exhibition is called 'Design and Designers' and it opens in Hamilton at the RAMP Gallery this coming Monday at 5.30pm. Consider this an invite if you live in the area. The exhibition will feature a whole bunch of 'things' that have all been reproduced at some point in the publication. I did and interview about it on the Design Assembly website, so if you want to know more go here...

I think, later this year I will start another blog where I will collect my thoughts and research about graphic design. I don't think it works to thread it in here anymore. Sometimes it does, but largely it just seems to distinct and separate.

Oh and by the way Head Full of Snakes is a finalist in this years 'Best Design Awards'. Check it out here, and here's some photos to remind you what you missed out on if you didn't get a copy!? Next issue coming out later this year – promise!

I will, also, sadly be missing Bike Night tonight as I'm flying up to Hamilton today...