DESCRIPTION Lord Mandrake CD packaging CLIENT Lord Mandrake DESIGN CREDITS Illustration, design and typography: Spencer Charles Illustrations heavily influenced by the work of Konrad Gessner PRINT CREDITS Spencer Charles TYPE CREDITS Filosofia by Zuzana Licko, Emigre

QUANTITY PRODUCED 100 PRODUCTION COST $350 PRODUCTION TIME 3 weeks DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 4.75 in × 4.75 in × .25 in PRINT METHOD Silkscreen PAPER STOCK Packaging: 18pt Chipboard Belly band: Red Canson NUMBER OF COLORS 2 spot (black and white) OTHER Cut, scored, and glued by hand

As the one designer in his band, Lord Mandrake, Spencer Charles set out to design and produce their second album. Not happy with the somewhat cookie-cutter outcome of their first title which was laser printed, the band settled on silkscreen and the best choice for their aesthetic needs and budgetary restrictions — and they would, of course, do it themselves. But I will let Spencer tell you a little more about the experience:

I did the illustrations in Adobe Illustrator, exposed them on to the screens using a poorly built light table in my serial-killer basement, and did all the printing on my kitchen table. I encountered more problems than can be counted, but there are a couple of lessons I learned that I would like to share with anyone new to screenprinting:

- Be prepared to make big mistakes. It never goes as planned, make sure you are flexible and have many different options in case something goes wrong.

- Be prepared to spend most of your time planning/problem solving. The actual printing stage goes very quickly, it's setting everything up to run smoothly that will take up the majority of your time.

- Have access to a pressure washer. Cleaning a screen by hand is next to impossible.

The amount of work involved in screenprinting can be staggering, but if you have the time and persistence, you can end up with a very cool, cost effective product.

By looking at the final result I do not get the sense of many problems encountered, so I have to give kudos to Spencer for finding ways to overcome his obstacles and put out a quality piece that does not reflect his troubles.

beautiful! I'm not familiar with this band, but I would buy the cd just for the artwork!

The different textural combinations of black and white over brownish chipboard are rich and varied. The red bellyband is a nice accent. You rock!

These illustrations are beautiful. Great work.

Nice DIY work. I envy you. :-)

Those illustrations were rendered in Illustrator? Crazy. Gorgeous work.

man, really nice work. I'd love to see those .ai files to see how you made them. Thanks for the inspiration.

These illustrations are beautiful but the silkscreen and chipboard add so much more to them! It's artwork like this that the music industry seems to be missing. Nice work!

killer work!

Wow! Just wow! Very inpirational.

Gorgeous illustration, and fantastic use of black and white against the textured brown background. CDs will never become extinct all the while they're packaged like this :-)

Outstanding work. As mentioned, the quality does not reflect his troubles. I wish more local/regional and national musicians/bands would take this approach to producing CDs. Album art is dying and needs a good kick start. I would certainly purchase more CDs if this were the case and I don't think I'm alone in this thought.

Just recently starting screen printing myself, I can attest to Mr. Charles comments and suggestions. One thing I would add to his list: Have lots of rags at the ready.

Screen printing and block printing can be very labor and time intensive but the results can be very beautiful as seen here and a prior post about the "Bloom" posters.

This is completely brilliant work! And yes, absolutely no hint of any snags to achieve the final result... therefore demonstrates brilliant problem-solving and trouble-shooting as well.

beautiful graphics

Awesome illustration! The cover and the cd look great.

wow, all drawn in illustrator? cool.

It especially looks good when you turn it into a screen print, makes it look more 'handy'

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