Dead Weather @ The Regent

I think this is the coolest design project I've done to this day. Two pop-up stores, art gallery and music venue open three days only. Jack White's new band, The Dead Weather was promoting their new album and more importantly, his record label, Third Man Records. They're a cool group of people. None of their business cards have real titles on them. Ben, who it appears runs the label has the title "Ghost Rider" on his card.



There was a very top secret operation happening in the door on the right, "The Bizarro Store". Inside would be collector's items of everything exactly opposite: cd's with backwards art, t-shirts with opposite colors and logos and only 100 items of each. The doors wouldn't even be opened until after the free performance and there, Jack would do a live performance inside.


The people started lining up about 3 days before the free show. Third Man doesn't think anyone should sleep on the streets of downtown LA and Ben made sure he got the names of the first people in line and promised them front row seats if they came back the day of.


The gallery had all of the tour posters from Third Man Records for sale. One thing I learned was that the artist that does all of the album covers and tour posters and Jack White have never actually met or even spoken on the phone. They say that Jack thinks whatever they have going on is perfect and he doesn't want to throw it off at all.



I actually have two ex-boyfriends to thank for this project. One of them (in a way) got me the job, he had a show on Little Radio , who recommended me to Warner Records.

The other pretty much saved me on this job: I only had a scenic artist in the budget for one day to paint the exterior sign. They didn't have the budget for a scencil and the amazing and talented grafitti artist Seth did the entire hand painted sign FREE HANDED and on scaffolding, which is really difficult. Well, Warner Records wanted to change the "S" and I had no idea how I could fix this. Such a nice boyfriend... got on a 30' ladder IN THE DARK and did such a good job on it, they wanted the rest of the letters done. And this took hours. (That's him below, on the ladder)


The highlight for me is wasn't necesarilly when I met Jack White. But it's when he and the rest of the band came to check out how the design was coming along. We had a piano set up in one of the stores and he sat right down and just started playing for us. Just the three of us in the room.




The payoff was the show. It was so packed, but I had discovered if you go through the "DO NOT ENTER" sign in the back, it was the best balcony seats in the house. They were awesome and even better that night at the Mayan Theater.

(Thank you Timothy Norris, LA Weekly for the awesome photos)



After 3 days of being open, we took everything down and besides the posters in the top windows, there's no proof it was even there. People were so mad at us for painting it brown. Believe me, that wasn't my choice.