I’ve always been a stickler for making sure that any flyer that has my name or brand represented on it, needed to look a certain way. Over the years, pride has gone into designing things that fit with both HP&B and Nostalgia King in a way thats not a simple photoshop a cliche’ image pulled off line and used for a flyer which is what you see most times from people who are not graphic designers. The homie The Elroy Jenkins set the standard with flyer designs and has always pulled and sampled imagery from high quality, physical hard copy photos from our archives it’s a simple way of staying authentic to our believe in OG’s only, no reissues of bootlegs in a sense.
Whenever there are other people involved with designing of flyers for an event that I’m involved in, it’s always great when the person goes the extra mile to find out who I am and put together something that fits accordingly. Recently while on my Magma Taishi Japan tour in Kobe, the party flyer that was created went above and beyond what I was expecting but I fell in love with it. I didn’t question who created it or where they got the idea from because it’s obvious that this person is a professional at what they do. But it wasn’t until I was in a small shop in Kobe digging that I stumbled across the original sample source for the flyer design which made my eyes wide with excitement. It’s that same similar excitement that one would have finding a record and discovering a sample that your favorite producer used at one point.
While at the party, I had the pleasure of meeting the young lady who not only created this years flyer but also last years which sampled from the Blaxploitation classic, Willie Dynamite. If you’re going to design, then go the extra mile and do it right, sample from obscure sources, not from the common where someone else could very well have the same exact thing.