Oliver Hazard Work

Illustration // Apparel // Poster
2021-2023

Merging my love of music and concerts with design.

It has always been a dream of mine to create merch, posters and whatever else for a musical artist, and luckily the Oliver Hazard boys reached out for some unique projects. Oliver Hazard is an indie-folk band from Waterville, Ohio, just a few minutes from my hometown.

They have an awesome sound and for the longest time, I was a fanboy from afar. However, I finally got to see them live at 2022’s Oliver Hazard Day, which I also worked on! It’s been so fun partnering with them on projects including everything from posters and apparel.

Oliver Hazard Northern Lights Merch

To promote the band’s newest single ‘Northern Lights,’ the guys reached out to get some new merchandise made and the main direction that I was given was something related to the music video they were also releasing with the song. The music video is a really cool stop-motion concept with cut out magazine and book letters showing the lyrics, as well as some cut out imagery like nature and buildings and an owl that becomes the star of the show.

This led to me creating a couple versions of the owl and the differently styled letters of Oliver Hazard to create a couple really cool and unique pieces for the bands first-ever nationwide tour!

Oliver Hazard Holiday Show at Ohio Theatre

When the guys reached out to me to make a concert poster, I knew this was a bucket list project.

Ohio Theatre is a historical landmark in Toledo, Ohio and we knew we wanted a vintage vibe for the poster. Being that it was Christmastime, my mind immediately went to the rough, illustrated, colorful greeting cards and decorations you’d see from the 50s and 60s. I created a moodboard (which you can see below) to put my thoughts together and went to work.

Because Ohio Theatre is a draw in itself, I thought it was important to showcase it as much as possible here and landed on a stylized illustration of the building in the snow. The poster is a mix of illustration with some roughened typefaces thrown in and a Christmas color scheme that doesn’t scream traditional.

Oliver Hazard Use Me Up Apparel

In order to promote their new single, ‘Use Me Up,’ the Oliver Hazard boys came to me to create a shirt and some sweatshirts.

The album art for ‘Use Me Up’ is a hodge-podge of layered icons and photos that we knew we wanted to work off of. I put together 10 or so sketches that I thought could work before we landed on the flower. The imagery of the flower represents the single, but also can be artwork to be used by the band past the single release.

Both designs are 100 percent hand drawn and hand lettered. See below for the sketches that got us moving towards the finish line.