In the past I've done a fair few flyers for courier events, most were HOP events but I've done a some for other people, this is mostly because I have one of those wee televisions you plug a typewriter into and due to having no friends I've always got the free time to do it. I don't mind, it makes me feel like the geeky guy who gets to hang out with the cool kids in every cartoon gang. You know, the one who in real life the cool kids would just spit on.
Anyway the first thing I've done for a while is the flyer for Papillon's leaving Al**ycat:
The whole thing is very last minute and I had to throw the design together in about half an hour and as Sod's Law would have it it's already become the most popular flyer I've done. Which as well and good, and thanks to everyone who's said they like it but I've done loads of flyers and some of them took me hours, just to have people glance at them and say " When is it? Friday? Yeah I'll be there. " It makes me want to chase after them and say " Don't just read it! LOOK at it! I spent ages doing that pretty picture. I've got SEVEN different version of it at home! ". I usually get around this initial indifference by ( if it's my event ) making the spokecard very similar to the flyer and sleep satisfiedly* in the knowledge that people keep spokecards for ever or, judging from recent occurrences, until some fucker steals them.
So to celebrate the first flyer that anyone has actually taken any notice of I'm posting ALL of the ones I've still got copies of in reverse chronoligical order i.e. they start off good and then descend into the downright embarrassing.
Oh, and some of them are spokecards.
I like this one. It's lucky the two most recent flyers are both quite good as it shows I've been improving, however look at this next piece of shit:
This was supposed to look like a Christmas card hence the awful font, there's no excuse for the Clip Art though. Clip Art is for people who think completing a Dot-to-Dot book is an artistic achievement. In hindsight it also looks like someone has thrown shit at a Festive Wreath... so maybe Clip Art has it's pros.
This flyer is spoiled by all the sponsor logos. At the time I had noticed how all the events going on, be them messenger or re-enactor, had loads and loads of sponsors. It gave me a wee panic that that was what people expect these days and my usual two tee shirts and a hat approach might not cut it anymore, so I put a bit more effort into getting prizes together. But on the night no one gave a shit about what they could win and I thank the Messengers and Fakengers that turned up for not caring, the spirit that courier events are supposed to be in ( from long before I ever worked as a messenger ) is in no danger of dying. Maybe having the last event involve riding through flames also helped keep peoples minds off prizes. There's a reason Fire used to be worshipped as a god and the reason is it's AWESOME!
The GHT spokecard is much less cluttered.God Hates Tyres is probably my equal favorite with the first Millportpoloco as the most fun I've had at something I was technically in charge of. Ask anyone who's organised courier stuff and they'll tell you how stressful and thankless it usually is. "Herding Cats" is how Buffalo Bill described it and for once he's right on the money, although he might have been describing his Controlling technique.
I think delegating all the shouting to Qboss helped keep the night fun, I knew one day someone would find a use for those lippy yanks that turn up to Messenger Events.
Hey Xander can you help me sort something out for my 15 year anniversary? No problem Overdrive, don't you worry, HOP will take it from here. It's my birthday as well. Oh well in that case I'll make sure we really pull the stops out and come up with something original for you. How about a copy of a race from two years ago and this lovely flyer?
At least HOP produced a well funny spokecard.
Donkey Derby. Draw what you hear. There's a good boy Xander.
I left off the word Al**ycat on the first version of this and everyone I handed one out to asked " So is it a race or what? " hence the "It's a Fucking Al**ycat" line on this second version... I found it funny. Over 70 racers showed up for this, we ended up turning people away when we ran out of manifests and Keiran threw a potato at me when I was trying to announce the winners. Serves me right for having racers deliver potatoes in an irish themed al**ycat. 
Totally stole the photo here from Essex Dave's Flickr without asking. Although he is in the photo so he didn't take it and he never credited it to someone else so I reckon I'm in the clear.
By Millportpoloco 4 the beast was so out of control it needed three flyers to publicise it. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre one was also the tee shirt for that year. Things got so out of control in 2008 there wasn't a Millpocalypse in 2009 but there will be this summer and in true Millportpoloco style I'll announce it here, buried halfway through the longest post I've ever done: MILLPORTPOLOCO 2010 30th JULY - 2nd AUGUST. More info soon.
Pikey Wayne's heart of gold decided to make an appearance when he organised this fund raiser after a pretty grim week where Chewy and Efri both got hit by trucks Chewy got off relatively lightly with a broken ankle when he got rear ended. His bike on the other hand was completly pancaked, I don't think anything was salvageable and it's carcass stayed locked to the railings next to the road for weeks as a testament to how dangerous this job can be.I remember the day Efri got hit. We all heard he was dead, we didn't know who it was but word got round that a courier had been run down and killed by a truck in The City. Baby Jesus** turned up at the scene and there was a paramedic tent in the road so he asked a Suit standing nearby what had happened, he told him " It's one of you guys... he's dead mate. " Fortunately some random Suit's idea of dead and Efri's idea of dead are totally different and after some skin grafts and a few weeks off Efri was back on the road and still the coolest looking messenger in London.
Anyway the double accidents and fundraiser led to the LCEF being set up and the Logo off this flyer seemed to fit so it was adapted into the LCEF logo and I'm glad it was cos I spent a bit of time on it and it would've been a shame for it to disappear when the last grime encrusted spokecard fell out of it's wheel.
This was one of those 'Oh you've got a computer can you do something for me?' ones. Selimski came round with the two wee guys and needed them turned into a flyer. I said " Why don't we just stick this lock picture I've done onto it? " job done. Three weeks later Selimski came round to work on the Brixton Pista Motorhead design and I said exactly the same thing to him.
Flyers are supposed to tell you information about something, this doesn't really do that... and it doesn't even look that good either. The main feature of this flyer is it is an actual photograph of Great Cumbrae, the island that hosts Millportpoloco. I've just remembered the reason for the lack of information was that James Tait and myself organised the whole event on the train back from Dublin CMWC. I think we probably had the decency to do it out of earshot of the folk traveling with us who had paid good money to come to the event.
We're still getting mileage out of this one three years later. Apparently it was used in a book about The Clash and their enduring legacy, but I never heard back from the author so the book was probably never published. Just as well, I'm sure there's enough copyright infringement for a court case in this rip off.More useless information: The organising committee wanted it to be called London ('s) Calling just to keep away from any possible legal wrangles but I decided to ignore them and go ahead and do a straight copy cos I just don't give a fuck.
ROCK'N"ROLL MTHRFCKRS!
One ripped off copy of Photoshop and this is what happens. If Braveheart had been called PeaHead I could probably have done their posters for them. This flyer helped turn James Tait into the monster you see today.
Ooh Crikey! Looks like someone couldn't be bothered thinking something new up for Overdrive's 'Dash For The Cash 2'. Here we are 4 years and 300 miles away and this skeleton comes staggering out of the closet.
This is pre me having Photoshop. I couldn't crop the photo so the border is four yellow rectangles laid over the picture. Ghetto. What surprises me is the fact that Bike Polo was being mooted for a Glasgow Courier event back in 2003. It never actually happened but I'd like to find out who put the idea forward way back then... it'll never catch on.
I think I'd had a computer for 2 months when I did this. It had only just been plumbed into "The Internet" and I didn't know that there were things called fonts you could download so I drew each one of those fucking KISS letters myself... what a total waste of time. I've since seen an official KISS font and the letters I drew that weren't K, I, S or S are almost identical to the pro ones, but that's no surprise cos I've been listening to Kiss since I was six years old. I doubt that fact would stop Gene Simmons from suing me if he saw the banner.*not a real word apparently.
**not the real baby Jesus it's just his call sign. I've just realised I don't know Baby Jesus' real name. That's someone I've spoken to on a nearly daily basis for a few years now, actually I now hope I never find out his real name it can't be better than Baby Jesus.
