Mizotion Creative

Beat Bar Video

mine — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:59:09 +0000

The Beat Bar is a new music venue in Leeds that’s focused on hosting music events of an underground nature. On the 16th of November they were host to Nest, a club night dedicated to bringing contemporary, cutting edge house music to like minded individuals, who care passionately about one thing; Music.

Dj’s on the night included Wil Madams, Zoo Look and Charlie Myers who kept it interesting by spinning everything from minimal tech to latin tinged afro house.

As a reflection of the underground vibe of the venue as well as the music policy, I turned the camera lights off and enjoyed working with the raw silhouettes created by the nominal lighting of the room. Aside from being an enjoyable night it provided me with a welcome opportunity to edit some footage that wasn’t bound by a brief.

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Vinyl Crackle Project Outline

mine — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 04:12:24 +0000

When I started toying around with the idea of doing a project based on my appreciation for vinyl I envisaged it being a short lived project that would at most consist of one or two basic designs, but once I started jotting down ideas I realised I wanted to go way beyond that and produce a much more rounded body of work. Due to a number of unavoidable factors it’s taken a lot longer to wrap the project up than I would have liked but I’m finally there and happy with the results. First up I have an initial 3 T shirt designs I’ll be making available via my online shop from next monday. Each design has been hand screen printed on to 100% premium soft cotton, is individually numbered and is limited to an edition of 25. The 3 designs available from next Monday will be ‘The Magic Number’, ’All In The Groove’ and ‘Grooves Over Smooth’.

Packaging And Small Details

There are 4 different swing tickets, each featuring a different photograph. Each T shirt comes packaged in a hand screen printed Vinyl Mailer featuring ‘The Delivery’ artwork. In Addition to 2 other designs I’ll be releasing as part of this project I’m also producing 4 short videos featuring various DJ’s and collectors sharing their opinions on the role collecting vinyl played in influencing their lives. The first video to be released next week features a friend of mine DJ and artist Okey Ebizie aka Omni Present Art who talks about how his musical tastes and subsequent interest in collecting vinyl influenced his work as an artist, the video will also be accompanied by a short unrehearsed mix from Okey on the decks. I’d appreciate any feedback you may have on how it looks to be shaping up, drop me a comment on here or alternatively on twitter or facebook

All In The Groove

mine — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:17:34 +0000

I’ve been working on a few new designs in my ‘Vinyl Crackle’ series and with a little help from my friends down at Dots I printed a few samples of this design called ‘All in the Groove’. I’m happy with how they came out but I’ve already made a few alterations to the design to give me the alternative of printing it with two colours. As always feedback is welcomed, via here or my twitter @mizotion I’m also on facebook if you want to keep up with me on there http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mizotion-Creative/110567542357005

Gilbert Lesser

mine — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:02:45 +0000

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a design project around the theme of Disco which led me to researching the legendary New York night club Studio 54. At it’s peak during the late 70’s and early 80’s, Studio 54 quickly established itself as the most prestigious club in Manhattan partly due to a meticulously selective door policy used to create a bizarre energy inside the club. Many of the most popular celebrities at the time such as Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger could frequently be seen amongst the bustling crowds of regular New Yorkers. The rise and inevitable fall of the club is a deeply engrossing story that boldly underlines the notion that every good thing comes to an end, whilst revealing the source of numerous practices still present in clubbing culture today. Aside fron the range of musicians I became aware of as a result of this research, I also discovered the graphic design work of Gilbert Lesser. After seeing the iconic Studio 54 logo I went on to search for more of his work which sadly isn’t in abundance online. Judging by the work of Lesser’s I did find, his work is characterised by strong geometric forms with minimal decorative elements. He was primarily known for designing movie posters and as the director of promotions for Life Magazine, which indicates there’s an extensive body of work for me to discover. The link below is a sparsely populated archive of Lesser’s work although if you’re lucky enough to be in New York anytime soon, some of his work is exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art. Gilbert Lesser Archive

Vinyl Crackle

mine — Sun, 15 May 2011 16:59:43 +0000

A recent design brief for a DJ naturally led me to looking at what it was about the art of deejaying that masses of people found so alluring. Speaking to various DJ’s I found that before they’d come to realise the obvious perks, controlling a pair of decks and a mixer gave them a special feeling they couldn’t quite put their finger on.

To the newer generation of DJ’s a deck more than likely means a CD deck, but to the more senior DJ’s a deck almost certainly conjures up images of vinyl decks and more specifically the Technics 1210/1200.

Over the past decade distribution of music has become prominently digital and as a result you’re much more likely to see CD decks in clubs rather than vinyl decks, but speaking to DJ’s who’ve made the transition it’s clear that most don’t get the same enjoyment from playing on the former.

Although CD decks have been made with the intention of replicating the functionality of vinyl decks it’s clear from speaking to DJ’s that they just don’t ‘feel the same’.

As someone who previously collected vinyls that now collects most of my music digitally I’ve noticed that the intimacy you felt with each individual record simply isn’t there with mp3′s for obvious reasons.

Looking at certain records I’ve come to realise that the memories of where and when I bought them account for a lot of the satisfaction of owning them. My collection of mp3s is far bigger than my collection of vinyls but aside from one release ( J Cole – Friday Night Lights ) how I acquired them is insignificant, typing an artist’s name into a search bar on itunes is hardly memorable.

DJ’s I spoke to relayed similar sentiments, often mentioning the satisfaction of playing a record for the first time after spending weeks anticipating it’s arrival at their favourite record shops or longing for the days when a fellow DJ might look over your shoulder to see the name of a tune to be faced with nothing but a white label. The digitisation of music certainly has its pluses but one of the most obvious drawbacks is that to many people it has taken the fun out of collecting music.

With all this said I decided to produce a series of designs titled Vinyl Crackle inspired by the nostalgic sentiments many people attach to vinyl.

I’ve already produced a number of the designs which I’ll be rolling out here on my blog over the coming weeks and months, the first can be seen below screen printed on a t shirt.

I posted a picture of this tee and received a positive response so i’ll be making them available to buy in the near future. If you’re interested in keeping up to date follow me on twitter or join my facebook page .

Stuff & Things

mine — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:30:26 +0000

Last month I randomly dropped in at ‘Dots’, a screen printing studio based in Leeds run by some friends (check out the short video I made on them here). That night they just happened to be printing a job lot of posters for a gig by The Charlatans so I took a few pictures, the illustration was done by the very talented Sophie Primrose of ‘Stuff and Things’ who are in the process of getting themselves online.

Over the coming months ‘Dots’ and ‘Stuff and Things’ will be the subject of a few more posts and hopefully some videos to get some insight into what they do and the ideas behind their work, but for now here’s a few snaps.

Random Snaps

mine — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 23:30:29 +0000

Looking at the date of my last post I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last posted.

It would take me far too long to sum up what I’ve been doing in one post so before I get back in to some detailed posts I’m just going to show a few random snaps from my camera.

More detailed posts will follow on personal projects, inspirations and other creatives I’m working with will follow, hopefully in less than a year’s time.

Love & War IV

mine — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:27:37 +0000

Hello it’s been a while since I posted anything on here which fortunately is a result of being busy with live projects amongst other things. I’ll be making quite a few updates to my portfolio in the coming weeks and going through my process for some live briefs but for now I’m going to update you on the Love and War personal project I started a while back. My last update on thius project documented the development of the Contego crest which is now complete so now I’m going to pick up on the process I went through to complete the Instigo crest.

I wanted the shape and composition of the coat of arms to reflect the offensive characteristics of the Instigo group, I perceive stars as being dynamic so it seemed like a good starting point. Most of the elements of the Contego coat of arms are enclosed within a shape so I wanted this coat of arms to be more expansive in contrast. Having looked at a lot of insignia I’ve taken a particular liking to emblems that are for air forces so I wanted to incorporate some elements commonly used in them, I feel these elements are in keeping with the idea of Instigo being expansive so I included some wings. I created two war flags in a similar style to the two included on the Contego crest and also added a chevron. the next step was to choose a motto that reflected the characteristics of the Instigo group, I used Latin for the Contego motto so I felt it made sense to follow suit with the Instigo motto. with that said I came across some mottos in various languages that I felt were strong, after a lot of searching and translating I narrowed it down to the following Ducti amore – Led by love

Toujours en avant-Always forward

Paratus et Fidelis - ready and faithful

Nec aspera terrent -Not afraid of hardship

omnia vincit amor -Love conquers all I settled on omnia vincit amor which led me to the next stage of developing the typeface to be used. Throughout the process of I was conscious of striking a balance between the two coat of arms being similar yet distinctively different to mirror the idiom that gave me the idea for this project (all’s fair in love and war). I initially sketched a font that was completely different from the Contego typeface but I then decided to use the Contego typeface as a starting point. The defensive nature of the Contego group came across in the form of tight counter areas and thick solid strokes, I wanted the Instigo font to be more expansive so I slightly altered the proportions to make it much lighter. Once I’d finished with the font it was just a case of setting it on the coat of arms. So this is the completed Instigo coat of arms,now that the pair are completed I’m going to focus on some of the ideas that have been floating around in my head based on the concept. If you’ve got any questions or feedback feel free to leave a comment, thanks for reading.

Type Series III

mine — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:12:12 +0000

Hello, I’ve been busy over the past week so I haven’t had time to do as many type pieces as I’d aimed.
Here’s the latest though, critical feedback is always welcome and appreciated.

Type Series II

mine — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:04:53 +0000