MELT: East Side Invasion!

MY EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY OF THE EAST SIDE MELT LOCATION.

It's true, I've been behind enemy lines, to the corner of Cedar and S. Taylor in Cleveland Heights. I've braved the elements and traveled to the Eastern Front. I've been down secret pathways, into what will no doubt be the most incredible place to cram your face with delicious cheese covered food in this or any other city. It's huge, and beautiful, and very much the logical, next level, extension of what Melt has been doing so well in Lakewood for the past three years. I'm really excited about this spring. The invasion is on.



This is the first of a bunch of posters that I've started to draw much bigger than I usually work. I mostly work on 9 x 12 sheets of Bristol board, and occasionally on 11 x 14s, but I watched Andy MacDonald drawing Terminator pages on some 11 x 17s while he was in town for Genghis Con back in November, and it looked goddamn luxurious. So I grabbed some 14 x 17 boards to give it a whirl. Worst case scenario, I could cut them down. However, it ended up being the best case scenario, and I now love drawing bigger. It's kind of a bitch to scan the work, but that can easily be worked around. Having the room to go in and get grittier with details, and draw with more full arm movements IS goddamn luxurious. I've got some 18 x 24 boards too, so... yeah. Going bigger. Who knew?



I looked at a whole lot of U.S. World War Two propaganda posters for this one. That stuff is pretty full blown ridiculous, but at the same time has this really strong sense of urgency, or... I don't know, a subtle desperate need to do something. Graphically, they're both primitive, and at the same time on this weird edge of overt psychologically manipulative design. Figuring this piece out was a lot of fun. I toyed with a couple other ideas, like switching the planes out with flying grilled cheese sandwiches, but it seemed better to be straight forward about it.



So these posters, as well as being the standard 11 x 17s, were also printed at 24" x 36", and these enormous 48" x 72", which are hanging in the windows of the restaurant while they're working on it. That's right, four FEET by six FEET. Posters.

If you're interested in getting a print, the 24" x 36" are on a heavy glossy indoor vinyl, and 30 bones. Feel free to email me for any further info: jgritty@gmail.com



The other posters hanging in the windows over there, is a redesign of the Classic Melt logo, with some standard promo rhetoric.



With this one, I knew I wanted to simplify it beyond simple. But not so simple as to make it look like it's been phoned in. My objective with the splatter and those tones was to kind of suggest maybe a tall gold beer, but also the notion of ...melted cheese. I think. Either way, my favorite line is "Wonderful Sunday Brunch". Brunch is wonderful, but I haven't been to Melt's brunch in forever. I've been going to the Beachland pretty much every Sunday morning for the past two months. Such a great way to start a Sunday. Get filled up, pound some fancy juice drinks, maybe get hyped on coffee- then head downtown to The Monastery to start grinding.

Speaking of, I've been really busy. I'll be posting some more stuff, probably later today. Definitely tomorrow, so stay tuned. Subscribe or Follow. Comment if you will. Get at me.