Catalinbread Effects
I've made some great friends through my many years in the underground music community and those friendships have led to exciting creative collaborations like the illustration work I have been doing on contract for Catalinbread Effects.
They create boutique audio pedal effects units with visionary tone innovations and I have tried to match their exceptional pedal-craft with illustrations and branding worthy of the circuitry and tones they produce.
Knight School Fuzz
This was the first pedal they approached me to design. They wanted a DIY element for the art since the pedal came as both a DIY kit-build for aspiring home pedal builders and a complete plug-and-play unit. I had fun with the hand-lettering and positioning the illustration to work well with the control elements.
What I did
• Concept
• Illustration
• Typography
• Hand Lettering
• Branding
• Logo Design
• Competitive Analysis
• Mock-ups
Tools
• Illustrator
• Photoshop
• Procreate
• Sketchbook
• Pen & Ink
Katzenkönig Halloween Edition
I was asked to reimagine the original art (on the left below) for the 2023 Halloween season. I took the essential elements and shapes and ran with the illustration style for my final version which appears on the right.
The demonic cat has left only the bones of the rat and the banners of the "cat king" (katzenkönig's meaning in German) in front of the red sun have been replaced with a trident in front of a blood moon. An additional easter egg detail is the Catalinbread "CB" runic monogram etched into the poor possessed cat's forehead!
Legacy Design (not by me)
Sinkhole
For the Sinkhole, the brief was to illustrate the feeling of falling into a shoegaze reverb wormhole. I looked at the cover artwork of My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive for color tones and created this textural illustrative treatment to compliment that aesthetic.
Naga Viper 2.0
Catalinbread approached me for a fresh update on their Naga Viper tribute to the Rangemaster treble-booster. I collaborated with their team to illustrate this vintage tattoo flash-inspired diced-up electric blue serpent.
Airstrip Console Pre
For this collaboration, we aimed for the rugged well-loved worn aesthetic of vintage audio equipment with this pedal that emulates the Trident A-Range console dominated the UK recording scene in the late ‘60s to early ‘80s.
Starcrash 70's Pedal Series
Another collab with Catalinbread from Spring 2024, this series was designed as a rebrand for some of their most iconic 70s-inspired boxes with a metallic green paint job and color palate that wouldn’t look out of place on the side of a bitchin’ panel van. My work with Catalinbread continues to push me in exciting visual directions!
Perseus Dio
I've been working on Catalinbread pedal layouts and designs for almost a year and the explorations keep propelling us forward! This layout was inspired by the 80s aesthetics of Tron, Atari games, and impossible geometric optical illusions.
Bitters
I was approached to design the Bitters as a reimagining of the much-lauded "hyper-deranged" multi-fx processor — the Alesis Bitrman. We worked to give a nod stylistically to the aesthetics of the inspirational unit and that era of electronics design while maintaining the Catalinbread brand and giving it a distinct identity.
Legacy Series Logo
Catalinbread later approached me to help them redesign some of their early flagship models to honor the pedals that they started the business with. I combined elements of their original logo with the newer logo to create a legacy logo for this series.
Super Charged Overdrive
This pedal was the first in that legacy series and needed to showcase nods to the hotrod car aesthetic and 70s typographical treatment of the original while fitting in with the contemporary design system the company has evolved.
CBX Gated Reverb
Influenced by the rack-mount units of the 1980s that this pedal's audio design is based on, we rolled out this pedal for all of the true reverb lovers out there.
Reflections
As a guitar player and total gear-nerd myself, this evolving design relationship has been one of my favorites so far. I am excited to create more illustrations and branding to complement whatever their brilliant audio team will come up with!
