"Jet ! I thought the major was...." (ahem, not that jet)

Boy, my neglected blogger dashboard coughed and spluttered and belched out gritty smoke as I logged in. High time to squirt some fresh oil into the engines, remove the chocks, pull back from the terminal and push the throttles to full power (why the clumsy jet metaphors...?!). Well I've been busy with various things, a lot of which are ongoing and will see the light of day ASAP but, for now, here is a post on some work from a few months back which I can finally, at long last, show.

To begin with I was commissioned by the extraordinarily talented dutch photographer Arthur Mebius to provide a graphic for his latest personally directed photography project "Jet Six Settings." Given my penchant for all things aircrafty this was a project right up my street. Arthur had seen a concorde illustration I'd done for fun way back when and felt it would be a good fit stylistically for his own series of 1960 'the gloss and reality of airline advertising' (my words not his you understand...) photographic scenes. If you look on the image below showing an internal spread from the book you might just see one application of my simplified concorde graphic on the wall of the crew rest area in Arthur's stunning photo. And it goes without saying ©Arthur Mebius for all the internal photos in the book.

From the logotype for the airline we moved onto advertising that airline with a poster cover for the Jet photos book. Arthur wanted that glorious late 50's through the 1960's heyday of jet travel feel to the graphics so, "I riffed on that theme man", and here is the end result.

internal & invite photos Copyright © Arthur Mebius

On a quick aside I've recently been getting my latest Mad Men fix, mainlining all the latest visually and narratively stunning episodes from season 6. I could almost fool myself into thinking I'd got to work on the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce "Jet account" (Stan Rizzo I ain't though ;-) And while I'm on the subject has anyone else noticed that Peggy has bought some more David Weidman prints to go with last seasons decorations ... she has very good taste! I'm very pleased to see such a great illustrator and print maker get exposure like this... even if you do have to have eagle eyes to see it. (can you tell I like both Mad Men and David Weidman... :-)

Mad Men photo Copyright © 2013 AMC Network Entertainment LLC. All rights reserved.

Back to Jet. Not to let a graphic go to waste, along side the book the artwork was also applied to an 'airline baggage tag' invitation to the opening exhibition which, very sadly, I was unable to attend. If you are in the Amsterdam area anytime up till December 11th I'd recommend you check out Jet at the Gup Gallery. If you do make there it I'd love to hear what you thought.

This really has been a cracking project to work on and Arthur has been wonderful, highly creative and colaborative client. Thanks to him and I strongly suggest you check out his website and marvel at his work.