Chris Summerlin is a highly skilled illustrator and poster designer based in Notts. You may have seen his bright block coloured designs with hand drawn techniques advertising music gigs around Nottingham. He is a guy who lives the creative life, producing indie posters for promoters by day and playing in bands Lords and Felix by night.

Who do you make posters for?
I mainly do one off posters for events for ‘Damn You’ the collective that do gigs in Nottingham. I do stuff for Rock City, Rescue Rooms and The Social… often they want to impress a band, and give the posters to the band as a present.

What is your style?
I work with big flat-blocked colour with no outlines almost photographic looking quite polished. Or I do quite detailed pen drawing of something or draw people by not looking at the paper, what ever it is I go with it.

What is your process?
An example is the ‘Deerhoof’ poster that has three faces all multicoloured on it. I’ll get the press images draw them using a light box. I’ll go over the images of their faces and just pick out areas. Then I use photoshop and make layers as though I am doing a screen print. For each colour on that piece of paper is a different layer in Photoshop. I just take the areas that I’ve marked the out line of and fill them with a different colour and tidy them up around the edge. It maintains some sort of hand drawn quality to it. The final poster looks like it’s just been laid down with ink.

Are they exclusive art posters?
I try to keep what I do separate to those boutique posters that don’t ever really get put up for a gig. I wanted to do something for normal people who put on normal things. If people wanted a souvenir of a gig they went to they can think, “Its 4 quid, if I put it in the toilet and it gets ruined after 3 weeks it doesn’t really matter.” There is an art involved in doing it but they are just pieces of advertising that I try and make look as attractive as I can

Favourite illustrator?
Kia Wong, he is specialising in drawing that makes it look like a very talented 12 year old has drawn it. So it’s not quite right but it looks really, really amazingly slaved over but its not quite right.

Have you made any limited edition?
I did one for Lee Rosy’s for the banjo player Daniel Higgs. I made 30 Screen Printed on recycled paper by ‘I dress myself’. It was really porous paper, like sugar paper, if you just had a bag of chips and touched it you would be able to see right through it!

How are you finding making a living from your posters?
Part of the reason I wanted to do it was that only the bigger bands, venues and promoters could afford to have a poster designer. I want to do stuff, for example charge £50 for a poster and let them do what they want with it. At the moment if I have a weeks worth of work and don’t really sleep I don’t really make that much money out of it. I’ve just started doing wedding invites for people.

What are you developing towards?
I’ve done a few record sleeves for people and it seems to be a format that works really well because they are usually quite bright and bold. It seems to me that that is what I want to do a little bit more than doing what I do. Also there is a big market especially in America for people doing posters designs for bands who use it for what ever they want. That seems to happen a lot, for better or for worse, it isn’t the way it happens in England. Maybe the posters that are designed in England for American bands don’t really get noticed that much or people don’t like them.

Why do you think that is?
People in America have merchandising companies that handle every last piece of sold paraphernalia that relates to the band and they will commission people to do posters for them and it tends to be an America centred thing.

Can good design affect the success of band?
You can’t make a bad band good by having something that looks visually interesting, but a band that is interesting in the first place, with a good piece of artwork to tie it all together makes it all seem like everything was deliberate.

Have you had any copyright issues?
I did a drawing for the band ‘Hermen Dune’ who played the Social. I’ve never had anything to do with copy write before and I went into the Rescue Rooms and that poster that I had done was part of the freeze blown up on the front of the bar. It is a real grey area because I did the work for the social but it was my poster and my copyright. They used it for an NME add and flyers too, the thing is what do you do? I thought I will take them to court but then I wont be able to go to any gig ever again in Nottingham because they will just bar me from every venue that they own. So I just billed them for it and hoped they paid it and they did. Some chap has just put me in contact with an illustrators union who deal with things like copyright and how you maintain and hold the right for your images, but it’s a really grey area

Strangest place you’ve ever seen your illustrations?
I was at ATP and there was a kid who had a t-shirt with the same ‘Herman Dune’ poster design that the Rescue Rooms stole, on the front of it. I stopped him and asked where he got it. He said from this guy knocking about on Camden market, so I still haven’t got to the bottom of this. I’ve got to make a stealthy visit down to Camden and take a load of burly men with me.

Latest posters?
I’ve just done one for a band called ‘Sun Volt’ an American Country Rock band. I am doing one for a band called ‘Neurosis’ who are super heavy terrifying band. I want to try and draw a farmhouse like a barn under the moonlight or some American rural architecture. They’ll probably hate it. I’m going to do one for ‘Dead Meadow’ a psychedelic band, so I get to do a 60’s psychedelic one… And another band called ‘Get Hustle,’ who are coming up in September, I’ve got a very elaborate sword and heart snake tattoo design to do for that. That’s all I can think of, unless of course anyone wants to give me any work, which would be gratefully appreciated.

www.honeyisfunny.com