In January we launched votmraz.com, a place where Mraz fans would be able to vote on all things Mraz. What new shirts to make, that sort of thing. Well, a new poll is up for Summer 2010 merch designs and it features a handful of designs by us! So, go vote!
Our man, and long time client, Jason Mraz, snagged TWO Grammy’s last night! One for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the song “Make It Mine”, and another for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals for “Lucky,” featuring Colby Caillat. Jason has been kicking ass and shows no signs of slowing down in 2010. Congratulations to the entire Mraz camp!
We just officially launched, VOTEMRAZ.COM, the first site of it’s kind for an artist (that we know of at least), allowing fans to vote on and decide the fate of artist merch. We developed the concept with management, then did the design and development on a quick 2-day turn. Pretty simple concept to start, but hugely powerful. The design(s) with the most votes win. This particular site for Jason includes a selection of Valentine’s Day themed tees but will be rolled out and developed further to include all kinds of fan involvement in a variety of different aspects of Jason’s career, music, merch and touring. It’s a great way to solidify the connection between artist and fan, while taking some of the guesswork out of the selection process for the artist and management. Everybody wins.
Look what one contestant on American Idol decided to wear…
It’s a shirt Darren designed for Jason Mraz.
Isn’t that special?
We are the proud parents of TWO American Design Awards. We received one win for the design and illustration on the Jason Mraz site. As you know we do a lot of design and development work for Mraz but this was one project we were really proud of. We received a second award for the flash development and music for Deluxe Honeydrop, makers of organic, healthy beverages now available in Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Whole Foods stores nationwide. Both awards are A.D.A. Monthly Wins for October, 2009. Go team!
It’s that time of year again..
Big congratulations to our long time friends Jason Mraz and the Beastie Boys on their noms this year! The Beastie Boys nom caught us all a little off guard since the record hasn’t actually come out yet, and I gotta say - Too Many Rappers is a great track but the rest of the record. HOT DAMN. Whenever that bad boy comes out, it’s gonna be a BIG record we predict. At least we’ll be stoked to finally get to play it in the studio.
Jason Mraz - Make It Mine - Best Male Vocal Pop Performance
Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat - Lucky - Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals
Beastie Boys & Nas - Too Many Rappers - Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group
And of course a big congrats to our friends over at Dangerbird on the Silversun Pickups Best New Artist nomination, and good ol’ Dave Gottlieb on the two MGMT nominations for Best New Artist and Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals.
And lastly a big congrats to one of SAM’s newest clients, The Lonely Island. Best Rap/Sung Collaboration… Crazy, right?
The Lonely Island & T-Pain - I’m On A Boat - Best Rap/Sung Collaboration
There’s some stiff competition this year in all of these categories, but you know who we’ll be pulling for!
Jason Mraz, a long running client of ours and all around nice guy, just wrapped up a huge North American tour which culminated with a sold out show at the Hollywood Bowl. We did this sweet limited edition poster for the occasion. This one just makes us feel good.
We’re please to bring you the Jason Mraz Summer ‘09 Gratitude Cafe Tour Admat collab. This was actually started by Brett Wulfson and sent to us by Jason. We then took it and reworked it, created the new logo, etc. Turned out great - thanks Brett!
This was part design, part development, all for a good cause. Mraz is a good friend and long standing merchandise development / consulting client of ours, and Rock The Vote is a new friend of ours through the Beasties posters we did for the Get Out And Vote tour and the Inauguration Show. We put the two together to help raise a bit of money for Rock The Vote’s continuing efforts, and give the Mraz fans who are also Obama supporters a way to represent.
We designed this paying homage the hand sketch illustrations by David Shrigley used in the current Mraz album packaging for “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things.” This is a limited edition tee that should sell out pretty quick so if you want one, be sure to go HERE quick to pick it up!
The new admat we just did for Jason Mraz.
The text here is just placeholder - the full and actual tour dates can be found here.
Thanks to Kylie Keene for the great photo!
Here is a group of various tees we have don for our buddy Jason Mraz over the past little while. some will never see the light of day for one reason or another, but most have already been printed and used somewhere around the world. catch them if you can..
Two years in a row one of our ongoing clients gets a grammy nomination! Well, 3 this year to be exact! Sweet!
Congrats to Jason for the Song Of The Year & Best Male Pop Vocal Of The Year nominations for “I’m Yours”, and the Best Engineered Album for “We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.” !!! If you know anything about Mr. Mraz, you know he works his butt off in the most laid back kind of way.
A true artist, a gentle soul and a dear friend, he deserves it!
—
Oh, and let’s not forget Wayne Brady! Nominated for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for “A Change Is Gonna Come!”
Also big props to former clients Boyz II Men for the Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocals for “Ribbon In The Sky” and Best R&B Album for “Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA”.
And last but not least, our friend Don Clark from Invisible Creature.. AGAIN.. this time for the package they did for Hawk Nelson. Nice work guys! AGAIN.
We were stoked to work with our new friends over at OK Rocket on the new Jason Mraz site. You may remember our post a little while back about creating the look & feel for the site…
Well, now we’re winning awards! Well, being showcased for the work on sites we respect a lot. Or rather, a site we worked on is, and OK Rocket is winning awards.. so, that’s an award for us too right? Sweet!
First one from WDS - websitedesignawards.com in the Flash category.
The second from Adobe as the Site Of The Day for 10/28.
Obviously OK Rocket deserves the credit here in creating a kick ass fluid flash site with insane CMS backend, but we’ll gladly stand up next to them and take the credit for the look/feel and conceptualization of course! Yay!
We had the pleasure of spending the last year or so developing Jason’s new photography book - A Thousand Things - under his direction. This was quite a project actually, sifting through literally thousands of Polaroids to come up with the collection showcased here, sourcing production, running sales projections, assisting in the marketing and distribution development, overseeing production, and much more..
I gotta say, developing a book like this is a LOT more work than we anticipated, and the timelines are insanely long, but we think it turned out great - a really clean, solid book that we’re all very proud of. Only 5000 copies were printed on this first pressing and it’s available now from Jason’s webstore, Amazon.com, on the current Mraz store, and ventually bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Nobles.
You can find out more information and see a preview of the contents on the book’s official page (which we also developed the look & feel for), athousandthingsbook.com.
Big thanks to Bill Silva, Jason, the entire BSM crew, the guys over at America’s Printers, and Graham Nash for trusting us with this project!
We almost forgot to post this it happened so quick. Our good friends over at NCompass asked us to create some graphics for the new Jason Mraz Website, based on the look & feel of his new album. It turned into quite a bit more than that, with The Uprising developing all of the look & feel for the site, myspace page, and the rest of his online presence. To be honest, the voiceover is a little bit annoying for our tastes, but it was J’s idea and we can’t knock it since his fans love it. and the site works and looks great. so there you go.
