AMP Visual

This is a logo for a start-up online venture that make online analytical tools for the music business.

From the inception of this project the title was – No Line on the Horizon – it meant many things to us, but mostly it meant the removing of any barriers, a longing to return to a perfect moment, or release. We discovered the beautiful photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto, ‘Boden Sea, Uttwil’. This velvet image of Sugimoto’s was set very simply in a white surround to make the cover. We added then the equals mark idiom, as a form of title. It sits above the image on a different plane, a different language – that of mathematics – but universally understood nonetheless. The implication of parallel forces is there; of nature and human natures, light and dark, harmony and discord.

We followed through with the rest of the packaging which included photographs of the band by Anton Corbijn taken in Dublin and Fez, Morocco. The packaging also included a special limited edition box set and a 2-disc digipak, for which we devised an interesting folding that always kept the same horizon line throughout, it that also included a folded poster.

Having been involved from the very start with U2 – from their first single to the latest 360° Tour merchandise and promotion, the range of stuff that we have produced over the many years include everything from the more obvious elements such as albums and DVD packagings, to the design of onstage graphics backstage signage, tour passes, advertising (indoor and outdoor) as well as for tour and album press advertising campaigns for worldwide usage. This breadth of experience has uniquely equipped us for handling all of a client’s creative needs – both large and small. The knowledge gained has served us well in providing the wide range of design and brand management services required by a major client.

This 354-page coffee table biography of the U2′s incredible career was published by Harper Collins and was a worldwide publication. We spent a great deal of time in research and design for this once in a lifetime book.

Achtung Baby was one of the U2′s masterpiece albums. We designed both the original album back in 1991 and the 20th anniversary editions in 2011 that was available in six different formats including the Über format which included a replica pair of Bono’s trademark ‘Flyshades’ from the period. Read the blog here.

The band and its record company have remastered and re-released several of the bands back catalogue in bespoke packagings. The Joshua Tree and The Unforgettable Fire remastered re-releases came in a bespoke deluxe boxset complete with CD, 2 DVDs, a 56-page book and a set of litho prints. There has also been made a bespoke 2-CD disc set in a casebound box plus 12 inch vinyl complete with picture innersleeves and a 16-page large format booklet.

The first 3 U2 albums have also been remastered with bespoke 2-CD disc set in a casebound box plus 12 inch vinyl complete with picture innersleeves and a 16-page large format booklet as has Under A Blood Red Sky – the band’s seminal live album from Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado in the US. The accompanying live film Live At Red Rocks was also re-released and re-packaged.

The U2 Popmart tour programme was a multiple award-winning project and it came as a 6-colour,  holographic foil die-cut cover complete with a pop-up of The Edge.

The award-winning U2 Elevation tour programme was printed the same size as a 12 inch vinyl and came complete with U2 ‘Elevationair’ travel stickers. Each program had a hand-applied sticker on the front, so every book was slightly different.

The U2 Vertigo tour programme toyed with the tour’s themes of faith and fear and was printed as a large-format book onto a heavyweight recycled paper.

This book is a call to action on behalf of ONE.org and is inspired by Bono’s address to politicians and faith leaders at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.

We have designed much U2 merchandise apparel through the band’s career.

Some memorable merchandise designs have been made such as the U2 3 symbols shirts.

For the U2 Vertigo tour merchandise, we designed a complete range of merchandise from mens and women’s T-shirts through to hoodys, hats and badges.

This is the lobby poster for the Million Dollar Hotel film which featured the music of U2. The design also featured on the soundtrack CD album.

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The earthquake relief fund for Haiti was the reason behind “Hope for Haiti Now” Telethon, hosted by George Clooney which featured unique, often unplugged musical performances from some of the best known global artists working today. We were asked at very short notice to come up with an emblem for the iTunes album that was made available to buy after this amazing event. We settled on the symbol of an upturn hand underneath an image that represents a Haitian heart.

Read our case study

Dave Gahan’s solo album ‘Paper Monsters’ was produced the same time as the Martin Gore Counterfeit 2 solo project. The photos for this sleeve and the title logo were also made by Anton Corbijn with added painterly parts on the singles added by us.

This Dave Gahan single sleeve features a high contract portrait photograph and layers of brushstrokes and splashes.

The Dave Gahan single DVD continued the theme of layers of brushstrokes and splashes over a high contract portrait photograph.

We worked on the sleeve design for Martin Gore’s second solo album Counterfeit 2. This was his second album of cover songs covering songs from Kurt Weill to Iggy Pop. The photos were taken by Anton Corbijn and the sleeve is generally black & white and a metallic bronze. From the album came the single Stardust and an EP called Loverman ep2+.

The inner tray of the Martin Gore album photograph matched to the outer when the CD package was closed. The booklet featured a large bronze panel with reversed out liner notes.

Martin Gore’s album and single Stardust and the EP featured Anton Corbijn’s portrait photography of Martin Gore.

This is a 2-DVD digipak packaging called One Night in Paris from Depeche Mode’s Exciter Tour. We tried to capture the live energy of the experience through the iconic imagery of Anton Corbijn’s – the band’s long-time visual collaborator, photographer and film maker.

The digipak packaging innersleeve continued the use of the Anton Corbijn’s photographs.

The Depeche Mode One Night in Paris DVD booklet featured stage notes and symbol drawings.

This is the cover of the Depeche Mode’s Touring The Angel tour program which we designed in a 2-tone shades of black with white.

Here’s a photographic spread from the Depeche Mode Touring The Angel tour programme and shown here is a photographic spread with a grid that deviates in 2 places to allow for fluidity.

We were involved in this multi-facated promotional project from the ground up, having been involved from the initial meetings. Largo Foods provided a box of documents and photographs taken throughout their history which formed the basis of the photo-collages along with a series of CGI images of the bold Mr.Tayto in various guises. The book hit the number one best seller list and proved to be one of last year’s big successes. We then produced all the various ongoing implementations for the nationwide promotional campaign which included 48 sheet posters, revised livery designs for Largo’s Bus, Truck livery and all POS collateral.

The Man Inside The Jacket – a marketing campaign in the form of a retailed hardback book – required extensive promotional advertising campaign that translated across a wide variety of sites — from billboards through to buses.

The irreverent couple, with a unique and less than PC sense of humour, decided to document the lifestyle and that of their mixed ancestory in a tome they entitled The Ballydung Bible. A photographic session was organized for the two brothers who were groomed to their usual height of elegance by their stylist. A lot of hi-end design was required to give the book the look of something created in the 1950s by the local Ballydung printers. The end result was approved by the brothers and then released onto an unsuspecting public.

Ronny is a Danish artist and producer. He got in touch with us to take on the job of creating an image and identity for his album Sweet Silence. Ronny had been on a shoot in New York with his photographer and came back with some great imagery to work with. Our job was to take these colour pics and create a mood and story based on some initial rough sketches he had drawn, the balloon and clown being the main focus. We followed on this style throughout his website and merchandise.

The Ronny Morris album campaign with it’s stark New York cityscape and black, white and red colourscheme was also turned into a highly visual website.

The T-shirt designs for Ronny Morris took their look and feel from the album campaign.

Our senior design team worked on numerous directions, and the specific nature of the domain – that of being ‘pan-European’, multi-cultural and multi-lingual – led to exploration of the international language of Esperanto as a basis for the name. The root of the name, Reto – meaning ‘network’ in Esperanto – combined with the European aspect of the project (European), lead to the final choice of Eureto as the selected name.

This annual report for Dublin’s Digital Hub, drew strongly on local heritage photography and the Digital Hub’s own already existing brand identity.

For a number of years the team produced the IFI monthly program from a strong design template which allowed as much flexibility as possible whilst maintaining the consistent look. A key element of the project was deciding and treating the front cover photography to make the strongest possible impact for the months key film.

The World In Flight album was designed as a digipak and drew heavily from the evocative band photography.

The album, Feel That Fire, reached the number one slot in the Billboard Country Charts and was designed at the request of Dierks. A fan of our design work, we arranged an initial photography session in Dublin and then a more formal shoot in the States. We then worked with the approved photography to produce the final cover which was printed in the cardboard digipak format. The logo and overall feel was then used for the revise of Dierks Bentley’s website.

De-lux Merchandise are a London-based merchandise company. They have some of the biggest pop and rock acts on their books. We are responsible for their identity and promotion across all print and web media. Unlike many of the counterparts, De-lux is all about ‘less is more’, the understated and the elegant. So many of the promotional pieces are a combination of crisp dynamic shapes, elegant photography and muted colour palettes.

The understated and the elegant styling was carried through to the de-lux website.

Working with Tom Jones’ management company and using his personal archive, this project was a great success. Being the first design concept that successfully brought together his early and current career in a way that integrated the two in a striking graphic fusion that included a printed celluloid cover and a die-cut silver foiled cover.

Initially we were asked to design the cover for the Sting’s new album that was released to coincide with a major tour. Several designs were produced and a meeting set up with Sting at the studio in Paris. At that meeting he made a selection from the various options presented. However, at a later stage we were informed that the record company in the US wanted to design the cover inhouse. In part compensation we were then asked to create a tour programme. This in fact allowed us more freedom to design and we were happy with the end result.

A historic series of rereleases for Gael Linn were devised to maintain a sense of overall identity while maintaing their individual presence. These included such historic releases as O Riada Sa Gaiety and extended into poster and press advertising for the range of CD and DVD releases. This project required sorting through the Gael Linn archive of existing photography and then using that material in the most effective and enticing way.

Vaccaro were a small New Jersey family-based company who manufactured specialist retro-style guitars with a unique patented v-shaped aluminium guitar head and neck. We were commissioned to develop all of their promotional literature and media that was unique in the marketplace. The resulting work utilised metallic inks and effects to mirror the one of the key differences offered by Vaccaro’s guitars, that of their unique split head and was applied to print collateral from stationary, brochure, leaflets, guitar tags, stickers, advertising and posters.

This six-colour brochure complete with silver metallic and fluorescent orange was designed as a series of spreads – each dedicated to one of the Vaccaro retro-style guitar models.

Working closely with photographer Christy McNamara the cover sessions were shot in the band’s native Donegal. They were captured in an abandoned cottage and the surrounding beautiful landscape of the location. For the cover it was decided to use a foil emboss onto the raw card board of the hard-back booklet, this process gave the end result an interesting and individual look as the foil emboss was slightly different on each print. The image of a reversed R from the front skin of the bass drum was the slightly icon image chosen as it worked well as a single cover graphic.

With typical tongue in cheek humour Phil Collins titled his solo tour “First Final Farewell Tour”. Phil supplied us with many shots from his personal archive as well as the cartoon that was used on the tour programme slip-case cover. The programme itself uses some strong photographic images along side a range of casual and informal snap shots to give his fans some insight into his career up to that point. We were also involved in designing a range of tour merchandising.

These are 2 merchandise imageries that were used across a range of apparel and in poster formats for the Phil Collins tour.

With the Phil Collins merchandise, the 2 drumstick-signature device made for a logo along with playful portrait photography.

We worked with Seminal Merchandising to produce a “z” styled tour programme that was effectively two sections in one. A historic section that utilized a selection of historic images laid out in a time-line page sequence. The second section was designed using then current tour and rehearsal photography. The whole design process was done directly with the band and their management.

During his time living in Ireland Elvis Costello worked closely with Steve Averill and the design team on a number of album projects including; The Juliet Letters, Kojak Variety, Painted from Memory, Extreme Honey, All This Useless Beauty and When I Was Cruel. The latter album’s cover came about from listening to a selection of tracks in the studio and then looking through a large number of library shots until finding the shot that seemed to sum up the album. Something that Elvis concurred with. The first track on the album was 45 and the cover was a reference to two of the most obvious definitions of the title.

During his time living in Ireland we worked closely with Elvis Costello on a number of album projects including; The Juliet Letters, Kojak Variety, Painted from Memory, Extreme Honey, All This Useless Beauty and When I Was Cruel. The latter album’s cover came about from listening to a selection of tracks in the studio and then looking through a large number of library shots until finding the shot that seemed to sum up the album. Something that Elvis concurred with. The first track on the album was 45 and the cover was a reference to two of the most obvious definitions of the title.

At various times in their career the design team have worked with Clannad. This most recent Live In Concert cover was design to tie in with the ethereal sound that is a key element of their celtic fusion music. The abstracted photo-collage gives a sense of their multi-faceted music and is a change from using the more usual live photography that accompanies such a release.

This is an identity for a noodle bar complete that was a twist on the iconic Fu Manchu – a fictional character who first appeared in novels in the 1930s and who has come to represent a comic evil criminal mastermind who lent his name to the Fu Manchu moustache! Unfortunately this project didn’t proceed!

This identity and logo was a highly adaptable icon-based system and as part of the brand identity, it was both playful and entertaining. Unfortunately though this project didn’t proceed!

Firefly sell unique mobile phones that can be used safely by children – they work by only being to make and receive calls and messages from specific phone numbers selected by the parent. We put together a colourful identity for them that had strong recognition values and that was highly adaptable and we then applied it across all the phones’ packaging, the promotional material and media. We also designed and built an interactive website that educated parents as to the phones’ value and that encouraged parents to tell their stories about the phone and its uses.

The Firefly branding also translated into an highly-interactive website.

For the band’s second album, Director had secured the rights for illustrations by an artist whose work the band had seen in the studio in Los Angeles where they had recorded the album. We wanted to get the feel of the type of card that some of the illustrations were drawn on. A poster using one of the front cover illustrations was also produced to accompany the release.

AWAS are a leading aircraft leasing company. Based in Dublin, they began working with us in early 2009. We eventually moved on to working with their international offices. Our work for AWAS has included world-wide distributed annual reports and an award-winning advert campaign; conceived, written, illustrated and designed by members of the team.

Elave are an Irish company making skincare products for over 75 years, products that use only skin-safe ingredients. We designed and built a website that gave Elave a stylish and strong web identity with a pearlescent background and simple typography.

The Elave identity also featured in a legacy-style packaging that also featured in POS and van livery.

For this project we were on board from the beginning. Initially taking a brief from the client as to the direction that they wanted the logo to take. A number of options were produced and the chosen logo had the required sense of “Irishness” requested. The concept of three hand rendered C’s representing a coming together of the community, commerce and Charlestown was durable and memorable. The next step was to work with the shopping centre team of architects and signage specialists. From there we co-ordinated the launch program including outdoor advertising, livery, point-of-sale, brochures and C/Style the Centre’s free magazine. AMPVisual were involved with many of the in-store promotional activities as well as with the direction and production of TV and radio advertising campaigns.

A Promotional brochure with commissioned model photography and design.

The Charlestown logo featuring 3 interlocking spirals appeared as separate colourschemes and also as a solid foil metallic.

This bespoke brochure to aid unit rentals featured french folds and thread stitching binding.

The Charlestown centre also contained a residential district and a set of co-ordinated promotional materials was also designed for this with its own sub-identity and colourschemes.

Commissioned photography with integrated flora and fauna was the theme of these promotional advertising posters.

This site features numerous names and upcoming acts playing on a balcony overlooking the centre of Dublin and has recently extended itself to mini-sites from a host of other cities around the world. We completely redesigned and developed a new look for the site, from back-end to front. Since that time the site has moved and the integrity of fonts used on the site has changed.

www.balconytv.com

When the band played a gig in Dublin AMP Visual took the opportunity to meet up and discuss the direction that they wanted their next album to take. From that initial meeting and exchange of ideas we were able to suggest various possibilities that enhanced the feeling the band wanted to portray in the cover artwork.

Zest! was the latest in a series of successful fund-raising activities. It was a compilation of recipes from top Irish restaurants. The cover concept, design and photography was delivered along with art-direction and a template for all of the interior page layouts. It proved to be a best seller over the 2009 Christmas period.

Here’s a selection of logos by AMP Visual across a wide variety of products and services.

From sophisticated corporate to playful and entertaining and local to international, AMP Visual design for a broad range of logo requirements.