In brief, I...

…design for print and web.

…direct Radio Khartoum, a small record label with decidedly continental tendencies, specializing in left-field pop and imaginary soundtracks. I am responsible for all visual design on everything RK does.

…also do album designs for BC Records, Shelflife Records, and Grimsey Records, as well as other independent artists.

…generally sign my work for music packaging as Bügelfrei.

In addition to music design, I also do food packaging, wayfinding signage, and websites for an assortment of good things and good people. I've even designed a manhole cover.

Email me: abalexanderbaileycom

Alexander Bailey
2211 Cedar St.
Berkeley CA 94709, USA

'The Girl Who Lost Interest in Everything' poster (2004) was adapted from artwork done for a booklet which came with the album The Last Thing I Saw Before I Said Goodbye by Welsh band The Hepburns. In addition to lyrics, the booklet contained wry and often very tangential commentaries by songwriter Matt Jones for each album track. As designer for the album, I added my own layer of visual commentaries on top of the songwriter's commentaries, springboarding my own tangents from both the songs and the written commentaries. The idea for this song's visual came from a (surely fabricated) story in the liner note about a 14 year old swim champion who abruptly stops swimming at the height of her fame, though the song itself makes absolutely no mention of swimming, sports or the like.

While the bulk of the album artwork was done in a style of high contrast, monochromatic images overlaid by straight hairlines, this singular image uses a different technique: an oversized traditional halftone pattern which provides realistic shading and contours to the diver's legs, overprinted by a very artificial body of water rendered using a different pattern. Where the water and the legs overlap, we get a moiré, an optical distortion which reenforces the disappearance of the song's protagonist into indifference. This particular image represents a bridge to style I used for the band's subsequent single, in which I take figurative use of traditionally abstract design elements (moiré and op art effects) to technicolor levels. Because of this bridge, we chose to use this design—extracted from deep within the album's booklet—for a promotional postcard promoting both the album and single's release, as well as for this poster for the album alone.

The links which follow are to my virtual garage sale. Very virtual, as I live in the Bay Area and have neither garage nor car (two road bikes). You're welcome to browse—and shop—though I'm mainly putting these links here for the search engines to stumble across.

Second Hand Records
Books in English and German
Books in Serbo-Croatian
Books in Macedonian
Bicycle Parts