You really have to ask the question: what in the name of the good Lord is one of the most acclaimed record company visual artists doing in Drogheda, Co Louth? You won’t have heard of him, of course – unless you are the exceedingly trainspotterish type that pore over credits lists on the inside of CD sleeves – but Chris Jennings has worked with and designed for everyone from Madonna, Whitney Houston and Ricky Martin to Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Marilyn Manson and Backstreet Boys, across record labels such as Atlantic and Arista and one of the world’s biggest merchandise companies, Winterland Productions.
 
39-year-old Jennings is from Tarrytown, Westchester, NY, a suburb as close to Manhattan as Drogheda is from Dublin. He’s been Drogheda-based for several years now and has been doggedly attempting to break into the Irish market while simultaneously feeding the US music industry with some of the best naturalistic art work you’ll see outside of the classic rock design days of the 60s and 70s.
 
From his start at Atlantic Records in 1990 as an in-house graphic artist, Jennings was working on ad campaigns and promotions for Genesis, Ray Charles, Roger Daltry, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Crosby, Stills and Nash, as well as reissues through the Atlantic Remasters and Stax/Volt series. Under the view of the label Art Director, Jennings and the rest of the design team would work on everything from bus and train station posters to CD covers, sales kits, poster displays, 12” squares for record shops, billboards; the whole gamut depending on the marketing budget for the project. “We’d bring out a range of images that could be used in different ways for all of those categories,” says Jennings. “A lot of people think it’s just the album cover, but it goes far beyond that.”
 
New acts more or less took directional guidance from the record company art department. “We’d sit down and discuss what their likes and dislikes would be, what direction they’d ideally like to head in, whether they fancied a certain typography, illustrations or photography.” More established acts would have greater input, he says, with design awareness quite high. “Most were very keen and sharp in terms of how to project their image and with the advertising or marketing of an album campaign.”
 
After two years at Atlantic, Jennings headed for Arista. Here he was Art Director at a time when the label was changing from quite a bland base (catalogue artists such as Barry Manilow and Kenny G) to something a little bit more youth oriented and urban (Whitney Huston and Toni Braxton). His first project, however, was emollient country act Brookes & Dunn. What does a rock music loving Art Director do when confronted with project work for an act whose music he has no feeling for? Simple – he rises above it. “You have to transcend that feeling, to just look at the spirit of the music, to read into the lyrics, find out what the album’s imagery is about. I’d sit with the artists or talk to them over the phone and get a feel for what they do. For a lot of country bands it’d be a visual portrait with some kind of interpretation and overlays. That said, in my opinion, I found Arista more conservative in the area of band packaging than Atlantic. But at that time Arista was reaching out and trying to bring in new music styles so that was quite exciting.”
 
Within two years, Jennings was on the move again – this time from New York to San Francisco to join Winterland Productions as Art Director. The first screen printers engaged in rock’n’roll merchandise, from the mid-70s onwards Winterland Productions had grown to become the largest company of its kind in the world (rock and pop merchandising was just part of an organisation whose well designed tentacles stretched from Disney to Donna Karen. Winterland Productions music division operated in two distinct business areas: they would buy selling rights for date specific tours by rock and pop acts, and/or buy retail rights, which allowed them to sell more generic-related merchandise in shops. “Most of the time,” says Jennings, “Winterland would buy both.”
 
Whilst at Winterland, Jennings was in creative charge of full merchandise lines for all the company’s rock music tour accounts; on any given day there would be at least 30 major name bands on tour worldwide. For it to have worked properly, managing multiple projects as well as being stylistically versatile - one of Jennings’ strong points as a visual artist, he outlines – had to be ingrained. “An art department churning out layouts week in week out, trying to come up with something visually interesting that will appeal to the fans, is something you have to look at in design terms. What embodies the music that visually will appeal to the fan? Try figuring that out day after day, week after week. “
 
Does such commercial consideration have to be explained to the rock or pop act? “Sometimes.” And what about the act that has the clout to call the shots but doesn’t have the design nous to tell the Art Director exactly what they want?
 
“Sometimes it’s difficult working with people who aren’t really articulate and who can’t really determine what direction they want to take.” Some people (and Jennings, the spoilsport, will mention no names) were horrible for approving designs at even the most basic level. “One female singer/songwriter in particular just wouldn’t elaborate at all on what she wanted her merchandise to look like – she just wouldn’t give you fuel for creating anything.”
 
Other acts - and here he does name the non-guilty parties - were fine: Tom Petty, for example, would have no problem coming up with excellent ideas for his merchandise (“he was very receptive to ideas from the art department, too”); Neil Young (whose Jennings-designed Acoustic Blend T-shirt is a particular favourite of the Canadian singer/songwriter) approved designs without much fuss. One artist, in particular, was unusually very keen to put forward his own concepts and have the art department work from them – step forward Mr Marilyn Manson. “He’d certainly be one of the more articulate in terms of knowing what he wants. A lot of his stuff is very much against the grain of society, though; I once had his God of F**k designs all over my desk!”
 
Jennings had by this time met a Drogheda woman and in January 2000 he departed San Francisco for Co. Louth. Still maintaining his links with record company and merchandise contacts, Jennings has since worked on Winterland Productions projects for the likes of ‘N Sync, Backstreet Boys and Ricky Martin. All the while, he was bemused at how most people from the town he came into contact with seemed to be so negative about it.
 
“Drogheda has a good little buzz about it. It still has a lot of old world charm. I think the culture is great in the town, the townspeople are very nice and welcoming. It has a lot of heritage and history to it, with a good proximity to Dublin – and it’s near the coast. The negativity surprised me and I still find it hard to get used to. Yet towns like Drogheda are about to blossom and I think I’m keenly in place for when they do.”
 
Currently figuring how to tap into the Irish music market (although he has recently returned from a strategic business trip to the US, so he’s clearly hanging on to some of his better paying clients), Jennings realises he has a couple of major competitors but claims that “everyone has their own style in their music and in their presentation…”
 
Heavily influenced by antique lettering and turn of the century graphics, Jennings utilises custom lettering and hand drawn designs to get his craft across. To date, he has worked on designing CD covers for Juliet Turner and local Drogheda rock band Geriko. On a more international level, he is currently working on t-shirt designs for Led Zeppelin, Metallica, Eric Clapton and Slipknot. And when he isn’t engaged in designing merchandise for music acts, he fills in his time by creating brochures and poster designs for Louth County Council. Drogheda Borough Council, Dundalk Institute of Technology and other bodies/organisations in the Louth/Meath/Dublin area.
 
Jennings’ own design aesthetic is fundamental: something that’s really pleasing and beautiful to the eye, anything that’s vibrant or rich in texture. He finds that people pick up on his hand drawn, more sensitive graphic work. “What a lot of people hold me in regard for is the more antique, carnivalesque designs. It has its place even now…”
 
To contact Design Joint, phone (041) 9803435, or visit www.designjoint.com