a big slice of spam

Here is the blurb for my upcoming show

Macquarie University Art Gallery
26 June - 6 July 2012
MUSIC TO THE PEOPLE features works by Sydney based illustrator and graphic designer Jefferton James. Jefferton specializes in music related designs for major music companies such as MTV, Sony, Universal Music Australia, Fuzzy Entertainment, Select Touring, Wonderlick Entertainment, Rainbow Unicorn, as well as for Macquarie University’s student compilation CDs.

chamber of secrets

Here's the recent poster i did for a one

off gig . The bi plane owl is an image or

concept i have been kicking around for a

while..waiting to give it the right home and

this seems to fit like a silk glove on an 

Elizabethan ladies hand.

Damien Leith - Got My Mind Set On You

Here's the video for Damien Leith that i shot a few weeks ago out in Rural NSW about a half an hour away from where i grew up. It was great fun trying to evoke the style of the traveling wilbury's and to really play with light ( it was shot on one of sydneys wettest days for the last few years ). Also a joy was working with a lot of my friends on this . One of my oldest friends produced it , byron my long time partner in creative crime , shot and lit and one of my old friends from the first band i ever worked with was the production assistant . anyways enjoy and good luck getting the tune out of your head.

have a little faith..part one

I recently Directed a music video for faith lee..here are a few sneak peeks from the upcoming clip ...the video itself is an odd beast that feels very much like the love child of wes anderson and fellini , with a little goddard thrown in.. anyways wanky film director refrences aside the video will be up soon and i will post both it but also BTS pics and stories.. stay tuned

coping mechanism

The concept of this is fairly simple , the joy of an uncaged bird singing ( or playing jazz ) but this was more an exercise in doing something a little more refined and elegant..something eye catching in its simplicity ( anyway that's what i tell myself )

taking the passenger seat

literally , all puns aside , i took the passenger seat on this one as one of my life long friends directed the latest passenger video for the song "let her go " I operated the B camera , getting a lot of the band performance and crowd reaction. The aim of the video was to make you feel exactly what it like at a passenger gig and when it comes out you will see how successful he was at getting that . Above are a few stills taken between takes.

where once i was lost , now i am....

This lovechild has many parents ...in the mix would be stanley donwood (radiohead artist ) , saul bass , 50's sci fi posters and my new found love of art made from polygons and basic shapes.. If art can be potpourri'd then this is it ! PS they are both pretty amazing bands you should get them out below is the original concept for the poster where the image was mirrored as to suit the double bill...as much as we all loved this , it just made more sense to have the more traditional type of poster ( I still hold out hope this concept will work on something else in the future )

once you go black...

I do a lot of annual event posters for Sydney radio station eastside fm Having done a few black gold event posters in the past and establishing a pretty defined style with them , i felt the urge to shake things up with this years poster and do something completely off topic. so i had this idea that black gold was a classic super hero character and that the poster could be a real play on the iconic "action comics " cover. so returning once again to those hand drawn roots i reworked the image to suit the event and the station .

turning over a new leith

Here are a few behind the scenes pics from one of the latest videos I have made , this one with Damien leith . the clip is a mighty big tip of the hat and wink to the classic traveling wilbury's clip "handle with care ". it was shot out in a heritage listed stable in rural new south wales during one of the worst rain storms in recent memory , so don't let the warm light fool you , its my attempt at movie magic. Video coming soon

when your'e buzz buzz buzzing with busby !

Here is the poster for busby's latest national tour..was so much fun finding just the right army general to deface with everyone's favourite nut eater

out and about

heres a pic a friend took of my boy and bear tour poster displayed loud , large and proud around sydney..what makes me happy too , is that the josh pyke poster is my handy work too

back in the saddle

So first of all , it was so nice to do something
by hand again , i have sadly sidelined that part of
my work for a while but it feels good to be back .

Secondly rainbow unicorn ( how can you not get excited
about creating art for something called that ) is a great
night put on through both macquarie uni and my manager Guy
Morrow (boy and bear , cutbert and the nightwalkers )..it will
be a showcase night roughly put on once a month to highlight
emerging talent . Its a great team , which im proud to be a part
of putting it on and look forward to creating more and more designs
for.





below is a very boring video of me hand drawing part of the unicorn
the act of me strapping the webcam to my head and drawing is probably
more amusing than the video itself

god's interns

So the concept for this came from mainly two places
one being my border line obsession with the museum of
natural history in new york and worlds they have created
in their window dioramas and a section of " hitchhikers
guide to the galaxy " where upon his return to earth 2
we travel past workmen in various stages of rebuilding
, literally , the planet..its a concept i love and its stayed
with me over the years.

as you can see from earlier mock ups of the concept
it went through different stages , each time growing
a little more in scope and scale.

the origin of the origin of species

I have been very keen on Darwin era science of late
and finding out all i can and i suppose this has seeped
into my art , it also helps that i was asked to do this
years frogfest poster and gave me a chance to tie the two
together.

the first series of ideas were all pretty much obvious
and just had well dressed men with frog heads until frog
dissection dawned on me and then i could not delete those
previous thoughts quick enough..i like those lightning bolt
moments but now we are getting into Benjamin Franklin and
that's a whole other story




here is the first draft of it..had a lot of fun making it
feel like both an old scientific journal or document , placing
the type around the page and anchoring it various parts of the
frog ( sadly the type proved to be too small to work as a poster
and a happy medium needed to be found ).



Heres the end result , a bit cleaner but still maintaining
that old scientific feel .

freshly inked

this clip has had more lives than a cat over the
last few months and even though the clip changed bands
and songs and went through countless edits , in the end
we have a zippy little clip full of time lapse , long grass
cool costumes , bad cameos and amish kids dancing through
the night in the woods...now if you will excuse im gonna
go catch up on some sleep




also here's another behind the scenes pic
out on location

never mind the pollocks..

This artwork , as you can tell , is
very different to my usual work and was
something more abstract . the concept ( should
abstraction have a concept behind it ?) was a
rorschach test as possibly created by Jackson Pollock.

Are you a mexi-can or a mexi-can't

Firstly im so so happy for boy and bear 2011 and 12 ( so far) has been such an
amazing time for them and I'm pleased as punch to be still working with them..so the image on the poster is an idea i had a few years ago..
it was a kind of a "what if" moment when i fused the character from russell crowes film cinderella man with a mexican wrestler ...that waterfront look
with that crazy mask was an image that stayed with me and as with most things
with boy and bear its an idea i held onto until the right moment...
So i got my good friend andrew finnigan to pose for me and then held onto these images until the right job came along..thank god i did because the boys named their tour remembering the mexican and this screamed out as the most obvious choice

below are some other shots from that shoot

new is the new old

as you can tell i was stuck for a catchy blog title
so here is a collection of some of the tour posters
i have done in recent days , Stu and Tim are fairly straight
forward in design , Stu gave me a collection of photos
and i gravitated instantly towards the Wes Anderson-ness of
this pic ..the Howie poster was a little bit more of a stretch
trying to find a creative and dynamic way of mixing a head shot
with the album cover..

its aliiiiiive

Going directly off the title , i wanted
to do something with a bit of an evil dead
feel , i also like that strong image of an
arm coming out of the earth ..then there was
the dilemma of working in the guitar , so i took
inspiration from old Man Ray photos and in particular
how he changed a woman's back into a violin..the result
is this , i like how the tuning forks kinda give it a
Frankenstein kinda feel

building an empire

Here are some behind the scenes pics from the
'Amish musical " video shoot for the band electric
empire and their very fun song " yes I will "..

We shot over two days in Armidale (Rural NSW ) with
local teen performers ..It was an amazingly relaxed and
fun shoot and shooting the dance sequences provided a lot
of room for invention and play..which always makes for a
nice day at the office.