This project started for me in 2007, when Marc, a good friend of mine, had started demoing songs for an album he wanted to produce himself. He had already decided on the title, ‘My Friend Marx’ which would also be the first track on the album and was to be the basis of the packaging design.
I listened to the rough tracks for a few weeks, getting a feel for the music, and concentrating on the title track before starting to produce some ideas for him.
The central ‘Robot’ characters that would eventually appear on the cover came from lyrics within the title song, and provided us with mascots throughout the performance and promotional cycle of the album. They star in a claymation video for the song and appeared across the promotional materials for the album. A 20 page booklet of Marc’s lyrics was designed to accompany the music cd and packaging.
Subsequent singles released from the album allowed us to pursue other creative directions and create stories to follow.
Marc has brought his music and mascots to audiences in Ireland, UK, Europe, Australia, and America. He is the first artist to be signed to the new independant label ‘Salt n Shake’ records and his second album ‘Human Herdings’ for which I also designed the packaging was released early 2014 and he now tours with a full band.