Doodles to Digital

Brian Grunert has crafted numerous album covers for artists such as Ani DiFrnaco, Drum and Tuba, Juilet Dagger and even last year's Fred Fest performers OAR. He got his start in a very different industry, however.

"I knew I didn't want to work in advertising, so what's first thing I do when I get out of college? Get a job in advertising," he said Thursday as a speaker for the Department of Visual Arts & New Media's Artists series. He went on to explain how advertising was not anything like he thought it would be. He described it as a blend of cross-discipline design work.

As an owner of White Bicycle, a design business which he operates with two Fredonia graduates, he relies on strategic thinking and business foundation.

One Fredonia student asked how he manages design tasks from the pencil and paper to the mouse and screen. "I have accepted the robot does it quicker than I do," Grunert responded. To add to his sketches and computer work, Brian has an illustrator, Mike Gaylin, who helps with his designs. He offered this piece of advice to students in attendance: "A person needs to be aware of their blind spots." One idea that is achieved, he said, most likely has a team working behind it.

The idea achieved most successfully for Grunert was honored by the Nation Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 2004, Grunert earned a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package. The package was Ani DiFranco's album Evolve which featured a display of calming natural life and bold colors.

Grunert describes his "nitch" for designing album packages as literally accenting the music: interpreting and expressing the sound and the lyrics into images and layouts. With Grunert's favorite band being Rush, he tends to work with more rock and alternative artists.
To draw his speech to a close, Gunnert ended with a paper analogy. The current world record of how many times a paper can be successfully folded is twelve times, he said.

However, if it were possible to keep folding the piece of paper, the calculated distance it would achieve is mind-blowing. Fifty folds would be equivalent to the length of the outer atmosphere from the earth the sun and a hundred folds would be equal to the radius of the known universe. What Grunert made of all this was it was just like filling a paper with a design. "This struck me in a holy shit kind of way…ideas are a staggering thing," Grunert said.