#rob carmichael

Rob Carmichael

Rob Carmichael

 - Solsbury Hill -

Babylon Destroyer Rob Carmichael SOLO show Saturday January 21 @ Foundry in Manchester NH - 7PM - FREE

If You Have Nothing Nice to Say, Say It Live - The new album from Rob Carmichael is here!

Listen and download: http://RobCarmichaelMusic.com

Watch the first video: https://youtu.be/mkh3enQEcr4

ART BLANCHE: Rob Carmichael

Rob Carmichael’s tenure as a designer began back in the ‘90s during the time that he ran a small, cassette-only record label called Catsup Plate. At some point, Rob simply decided that it’d be easier and cheaper to create the art for the label's releases himself rather than outsourcing it.

"I put out the second Animal Collective record, for instance. I put out Black Dice, Destroyer; kind of back before anyone cared about them," Rob said. "As some of the bands got bigger and got signed to real labels with real budgets they'd ask me to help out and be a little bit of more involved, and that kept growing and growing until I started doing this full-time."

Black Dice – Beaches & Canyons (via Rob Carmichael)

Going "full-time" as a designer happened in 2005 when he quit his day job -- a move that signaled the end of the line for a series of vocations with which he'd been less than thrilled, in favor of a career he’d had his eye on for quite some time.

"Before 1999 I was living in Philadelphia doing odd jobs: working in the shipping department of a software company and this and that. So when I moved to New York I decided that I wanted to try and be a graphic designer but I didn't know how, and no one would hire me because I didn't know how," Rob explained. "So, I actually did some PowerPoint work in the evenings for consulting firms -- it was super soulless stuff. But early on, some of my first projects I would [work on] concurrently at work. Somehow I'd have a billable job, but I would also do art for the new Black Dice record or whatever."

"It was a tradeoff; I didn't really care about [the job] and I could kind of do my passion work there, but it also sucked pretty badly."

Despite sneaking his passion work in while at the day job, Rob found that he still had so much to do when he got home that his work was keeping him up until 1-2 am every night. Eventually, he decided that this was not the ideal way of doing things.

"I kind of had to make a choice and it was a no brainier to quit the corporate day job."

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca (via Rob Carmichael) 

Since going full-time, Rob has worked with a bevy of musicians including Animal Collective, Real Estate, Beirut, Dirty Projectors, and Phillip Phillips. Despite the variety of clients and the range of ideas and approaches that they bring to the design table, Rob understands that every job comes down to the same fundamental goal: make it work, and make it work well.

"[When joining a project] my responsibility is to pick up where things are at and make it the best it can be. Sometimes it means they have no ideas whatsoever and that it's totally grounded out, and sometimes it means 'I have this picture of my dog and how do we make this cool and epic' or 'it needs to be yellow and the type needs to be Helvetica only'... it can vary."

"The sort of new age-y or corporate speak-y BS thing that I would say is: I try and solve the problem," he added. "I'm presented with a visual problem that's either nothing, or they have this thing that's not working, and they've talked to me to make something work out of what I've been given visually."

In this day and age, for a designer like Rob, there can be as much contact and as many notes from the label or a manager as the band itself, and the act of balancing everyone involved has become as much a part of Rob's job as the actual art.

Avey Tare – Down There (via Rob Carmichael)

"It's like any type of project management: you're kind of like a therapist and a salesman -- you put things into different ways with different people, without lying or anything."

By approaching each person while conscious of their goals for the project, Rob can help make sure that everyone gets at least some of what they want out of it, and that no one's completely left out to dry.

That said, when it comes to finding a starting point for a project, despite his background with running a label of his own, it seems that Rob's creative side has won over his loyalty, for now:

"I suppose a label wouldn't want to hear this, but I always try and start from the band's perspective," he said.