Daddy Kool's Record Store day 2015 shirt / process

For the last couple years I've created a shirt design to mark Record Store Day at Daddy Kool Records, located in St. Petersburg, FL. Robbie Fuct, who I've known for awhile through Gigposters.com and hours and hours of playing Call of Duty (PEW PEW) will come to me with an idea, sometimes specific and sometimes sort of vague that we'll develop into a shirt design. For the first year the theme they wanted was something evocative of Public Enemy....

For the second year, the theme was something Joy Division inspired as the event was to coincide with a Peter Hook (bassist for Joy Division and New Order) performance going on that night across the street. I've been a fan of New Order for a long time...strangely I was introduced to New Order before Joy Division which I love as well, when they used to play Bizarre Love Triangle all the time at Mean Mr. Mustards in Columbus (RIP). So needless to say I was pretty excited about this. First off, sometimes, it's not a good idea to just skim a message about a job, because in this case I misunderstood the connection to Peter Hook. What I thought was that he was going to be doing a performance AT Daddy Kools, so in my mind I saw him performing a stripped down acoustic set in the store rather than a full fledged show later on that night. My first sketch kind of reflected that. My memory of Peter Hook in New Order videos was of him hunched over his bass...and going n that direction I thought it would be cool to make him literally look like a human hook shape....

They (Robbie and his bosses) liked the sketch but wanted there to be more of a visual connection to Joy Division.....there's the obvious Unknown Pleasures album cover / t-shirt design that's kind of been done to death in recent years but there's also a ton of other imagery associated with Joy Division to draw from....while trading different imagery back and forth Robbie sent me this cover to their Love Will Tear Us Apart 12" and I knew this direction would be right up my alley....I mean c'mon, it's an angel.

For my first sketch I went a little too literal, although the idea was to make the angel from that cover look as though she is laying on the floor listening to records on some headphones....

They liked it, but we both agreed it didnt have to be so literal and could instead evoke the angel on that cover, but not be a copy of her....so I did another pass with a live human and this also allowed me to incorporate that Unknown Pleasures design shirt design into it.

After that was approved I took it to final - hand drew the line art and colored (greyscale) in Photoshop.

Coolest part was getting a pic sent to me of Peter Hook wearing the shirt at his performance that night.....