Austin Wade
I’m a graphic designer, illustrator, and art dirctor speaking to the design-minded and aesthetic appreciators. My work draws influence from old world design styles and places emphasis on a refined, naturalistic feel. I believe that a focus on natural textures and handcrafted looks creates a connection and draw with the end user that is unrivaled in today’s highly digital landscape.
In 2010 I got my start designing merchandise and album covers, and worked my way through the ranks to being the art director of a multi-million dollar international corporation. I’ve worked in nearly every industry you can think of and have touched just about every type of design project there is, from designing Instagram ads to directing and treating full 1000sq/ft trade show booths.
My focus is on intentional branding, packaging, and telling compelling, thoughtful stories through advertising.
Quiet Zoo - The Mire
“The Mire” is my band Quiet Zoo’s debut full length album. As a recent member, I was lucky enough to be trusted with the art direction of the full release. Every visual touchpoint was within my jurisdiction, and the band allowed me to hire talent and guide artists together towards a common goal. The result is something we are all incredibly proud of.Services:
Art Direction
Merchandise Design
Photo Retouching
Video Editing
Album Art
Artwork by Tobby Hurst
Photographed and retouched by me
“The Mire” is an album about the duality of grief and hopefulness. The lyrics explore events that caused severe emotional turmoil, and an inner struggle to find hope. A common recurring theme was wanting help, and hoping for resolution, despite not feeling like either are possible.
With this in mind, we wanted to represent these dualities visually within the art. Our guitarist Zach’s brother Tobby Hurst has been making shadow boxes with moths and botanicals for a number of years, and we thought he could create something really special. Not only would the art reflect the band as a whole for their history of using floral and natural imagery, but it could also serve as a real, physical object that could be recreated and sold as band merchandise.
The decision to keep any typography off of the artwork was deliberate, a way to allow Tobby to sell recreations of the artwork that look more like a fine art piece than an item of band merch. I’ve long been a fan of bands making merchandise that’s beyond the usual tee shirts and hoodies, and the band agreed.
The final result was a striking visual representation of the duality - a Death Head moth representing grief, and a Blue Emperor butterfly representing hope and new beginnings. Each member of the band also chose a flower to represent themselves on the artwork, which would then be used throughout the visual language of the release.
Photography
We hired incredible local photographer Sam Skapin for the promo photos. The idea was to project images of our chosen flowers on us to coordniate with the artwork, and then represent each of us individually with a color from our respective flowers. I directed Sam and her assistant on the shoot and allowed them to work their magic. Armed with a shot list and mood boards I provided, Sam was able to capture images that absolutely blew the band away.
Merchandise
I was also tasked with designing the merch spread for this release. Again, the band gave me their full trust and allowed me to craft what I felt worked best for the overall look and feel of the album.
I took this as an opportunity to try some new techniques that I felt could service the visual language of the album well. I wrote the band’s name with a parallel pen in a blackletter / gothic fon, then photographed it through a curved glass bowl full of water. This gave an unpredictable warping of the letterforms that followed the somewhat “trippy” but aggressive tone of the music and created a super unique and exciting look.
I then tried some new typography layout techniques to combine with the more organic and distroted type to hybridize a few stylistic references.
The band also felt it would be beneficial to have one shirt that more literally represented the artwork, so I was sure to make something that was a little more “traditional” in terms of band merch concepts, utilizing the title card of the first single’s music video as the primary typographic focus.
Music Video
For the first single off of the album, the band wanted to put out a video or visualizer. We went with somewhat of a hybrid approach, hiring local videographer Adem Zapotechne to film the band playing through the song in our practice space.
I then took the footage and edited together the video / visualizer for the song, using floral imagery of each member’s chosen flower in a trippy, somewhat abstract style to really push the dream-like feel we wanted present throughout the release.