Heads of State

I came across this design studio when I was looking for interesting music industry design for my new context brief. Their work really struck me. Immediately from just looking at their website and it's layout I knew that I would like the work they produced. After all, web design is incredibly important, I am noticing this more and more recently. Poor design and I turn off straight away, it's bad, but I don't even give it a chance.

Jason Kernevich and Dustin Summers have been working together in one form or another since 2002. After graduating Tyler School of Art’s militant design program, Kernevich and Summers began making silkscreen posters for Philadelphia’s independent music scene. The graphic and conceptual simplicity of their collaborations made an immediate impact on the burgeoning poster revival in North America. Local clients and small projects paved the way to international acclaim and assignments from the likes of R.E.M., Wilco, and The New York Times. They now run a full-service design and illustration operation, applying their graphic elegance and visual wit to a wide range of clients and projects. They’ve won awards from Communication Arts, American Illustration, Print Magazine, Graphis, and the Society of Illustrators.

Client list

The New York Times
Starbucks
BBDO
Ogilvy & Mather
The School of Visual Arts
The New York Public Library
American Express
NPR
Nickelodeon
Penguin
Vintage Books
Random House
HarperCollins
The New Yorker
Esquire
Wired
The New Republic
Metropolis
Los Angeles Magazine
The New Republic
R.E.M.
Wilco
Iron and Wine
The National
Idlewild
Modest Mouse
Insound
Sony/EMI
Jade Tree Records
Drive-Thru Records
Capitol Records
Louisville Actors Theatre
Virgin Mobile
The Boston Globe
The Washington Post
The London Guardian

Very impressive list.

A couple of campaigns they have done.

This is very interesting to me. It reminds me a lot of one of the ISDT briefs we have been looking at for the next part of the module where we have to visually represent a song using its lyrics.

POSTERS

These are some of the music/band posters they have produced. As said copious amounts of times, I would love to create work like this. Both because it looks nice, and because it is brilliant at drawing people to shows. Eye-catching work leads to people reading the posters.

BOOK COVERS

These are very interesting to me as personal design is very much something I would like to try out. One's own interpretation of a book's content, visually represented on the cover.

I have stated a lot that this is an area of graphic design that I am very much interested in.