Tristan Greatrex

Working alongside the guys in LIONHEART, for the past two years, creating their 2017 album and EP artwork, 'Second Nature' (also the 2018 Christmas single, 'Mary Did You Know'), I also run the Lionheart Facebook fansite page. For those of you who may not know, LIONHEART have an amazing band lineup: Lee Small (SHY, Phenomena, Signal Red), Steve Mann (Michael Schenker, The Sweet), Rocky Newton (MSG, The Sweet), Clive Edwards (UFO, Uli Jon Roth, Wild Horses) and finally Dennis Stratton (Iron Maiden, Praying Mantis). That's the connection to Nikki Stringfield, IRON MAIDEN. Eearly this year (2019), I was researching 'Dennis Stratton and his time with Iron Maiden and a post from 'Nikki Stringfield from The Iron Maidens' popped up. Nikki's post was the plans on releasing her solo album later that same year. A link also took me to a YouTube channel featuring an interview with Nikki and also links to her performances with 'The Iron Maidens'. I enjoyed what I heard and ended up messaging Nikki. It wasn't until the July/August 2019 that I heard back - the album was ready. "Would I be interested in creating the album cover and packaging?" "Hell, Yes I would". And so the collaboration started, with many messages back and forth / beaming across the Atlantic (LA to London), we started working together on this exciting release - 'Harmonies for the Haunted'.

The first major step was to create the front cover - Nikki had planned a photo session and was able to send me some really cool photo's. Various visuals were created and after some discussions on the cover artwork, the look and feel of the album, we were happy. The next step was to match that look to the rest of the package. This resulting in a six-panel CD Digipak release.

Working with Nikki was a joy, the artwork came together really very easily and it was a fun process for me. The next brief for the CD label artwork was to possibly incorporate Nikki's Schecter guitar fretboard design.

What a great fretboard - The 12th fret skull and beautiful vines running up and down the neck. One very cool idea that Nikki had was to take the fretboard and create a circle of it that runs around the outer edge of the CD label. WOW. I work very much on the principle that 'anything can be done' and then worry about 'how on earth can that be done'. I have a great suite of graphics tools, Adobe Create Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) plus my amaziong MacBook Pro but as most people know, I have still have to create. Work was done using high res images of the fretboard, and basically cutting it up into 4 segments (repeated) and then 'polar coordinate' the image - It all worked out really well indeed..

The past month we have focussed on creating a great package for 'Harmonies for the Haunted' and I am proud of the work that we both spent on it. Working so far away geographically is no problem now with the internet and fibre broadband connections. The time difference actaully helped as I would be creating during the day and would send Nikki visuals over in the evening, just as she was getting up - 8 hour time difference - and then as I slept, Nikki would think on the designs and drop me a line for updates.

Once the album artwork was completed, Nikki also approached me for some associated merchandise designs. We aimed to create a merchandise bundle to coincide with the release and I was tasked with designing various products: t-shirt, sticker, 11"x17" poster, pick, fridge magnet and postcard. The album design 'tone' had been set and everything turned out perfectly.

Here's to the next project :-)

NIKKI STRINGFIELD WEBSITE

Tristan always goes above and beyond... he’s a complete professional and one of the most talented artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with!

Nikki Stringfield, guitarist THE IRON MAIDENS