Off the back of designing Nice Shirt Films identity and new website I was invited by director John Turner to design the film titles and promotional materials for his excellent short film 'The Ragtop Boys', the film which is in the style of an observational documentary follows a British greaser gang on there last weekend together, it's a film about friendship, and growing up in mundane suburbia; it’s a nostalgic film about feeling part of a gang and being ready to set the world on fire.
The film is currently doing the rounds at film festivals internationally (a requirement of is that the film can't be publicly available) so I can't show the finished titles in the film just yet... I can however show a few stills and tell you the story behind them.
The design of The Ragtop Boys was very much inspired by the vernacular of Chicago's greaser gangs and there calling cards from the 1950's — 70s. There's some fantastic examples of these here. I love their immediacy and the element of amateurism to them, they're much more menacing than they are threatening and each gang exudes a certain idiosyncratic charm made up of there visual codes and the myth it creates around the gang. This was exactly what I wanted to achieve with the Ragtop Boys' campaign and titles, to create a coded language synonymous with the gang, something with a lot of swagger about it that had charm but also a menacing gang mentality about it.
The fantastically talented Mike Redmond was instrumental to all this. I commissioned him to become the hand of the Ragtop Boys; I hadn't commissioned an illustrator before so I took my naivety in the area and ran with it. I told Mike I wanted him to be illustrations equivalent to a method actor, for the purpose of the job he was a member of The Ragtop Boys. Now I'm not sure how far he went with his method but the results where brilliant.
Here's a look at the titles, which where interspersed throughout the film, when a new character was introduced there personal calling card flashed up:
I spent an interesting 24 hours running up to the roof and back with watering-cans trying to get the card of the calling cards to rapidly age by a couple of decades, I'd soak them with water and watered down bleach, let them dry again, jump on them, sit on them, knee drop them and pull them through the gaps in the studios wooden floorboards to rough up the edges Repeat this several times and you can age paper pretty well; all in the name of design!
Research is really critical to me as a designer, whilst I was thrilled by the vernacular of the Greaser Gangs' calling cards they also worried me a lot, predominantly they used a combination of hand drawn elements, letterpress and blackletter typography. It's the blackletter typography that bothered me as it's commonly (although often mistakenly) association with the Nazi Party. Combined with scrawls of KKK hoods and nazi iron crosses I got a bit worried indeed, nazi sympathisers The Ragtop Boys are not! But... many of the gangs in question where Black or Latino...
I had two theories one was that the vernacular style came from Chicago itself, the masthead of the Chicago tribune had been a blackletter since the papers inception in 1847. My other theory was that the gangs blackletter typography came from the Latino gangs — a lot of blackletter woodtype was exported from Germany to Latin America and heavily adopted there... you can see the influence on gang culture through graffiti all across America, specifically in California. My theories weren't enough so I decided to investigate further:
After contacting ex-gang members I discovered that there was no association with White Power organisations and that this was all part of the codes of the gang and their one-up-man-ship over other gangs. This one-up-man-ship definitely was like the Ragtop Boys and gave me the confidence to really push the Blackletter in the design; opting for a typeface called Tannenberg even though it was commonly used in the Third Reich (and eventually denounced by Hitler) it carves the perfect identity for The Ragtop Boys. Type buffs might want to catch me out on the other typeface used. AG Old Face which was only designed in 1984; but as the budget wasn't there to go digging through typedraws in Chicago and print the design all in letterpress.... AG Old Face provided the closest match.
Here's the email invites to the premier screening held at the Aubin Cinema:
At the screening the audience where admitted with rubber stamps on there hands, buttons and temporary tattoos everyone in attendence was an honoury member of the gang and given a Ragtop Boys Fanzines (the press pack).
The fanzine was also made from the perspective of the Ragtop Boys. I spent the afternoon on a photocopier and cutting matt to get the right feel, there was a little scalpel accident which just so happened to be the missing element of one layout, Blood and sweat (but no tears) went into The Ragtop Boys campaign.
With the dvd case I thought it would be great if the design looked like it had been graffiti'd on by the gang in magic marker... so I had the designs screenprinted directly onto the jewel case's.
It was a fantastic project to work on...
thanks to Director John Turner for asking me to come on board.
http://www.niceshirtfilms.com/director/john-turner/
And thanks to Mike Redmond; illustrator extrardinaire for adding his amazing talent to the project.
http://www.mikeredmond.co.uk/
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