about The Heads of State

http://www.theheadsofstate.com

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Indie upstart poster makers The Heads of State are just getting their brushes wet.

by Andrew Parks



It¹s a quarter past noon on an exceptionally bright Sunday. Over in Old City, the weary-eyed worker bees munch on overstuffed omelets and sip frothy cappuccinos. A neighborhood away, the concert-poster-making The Heads of State -- 24-year-olds Dustin Summers and Jason Kernevich -- bypass brunch for the comfort of a dingy diner, complete with battered booths and waitresses who don¹t know the meaning of the word refill.

In an hourlong interview, the graphic designers discuss poster art, Sub Pop, Modest Mouse and Limp Bizkit. Coffee, Coca-Cola, a buttered bagel and French toast drizzled with fake syrup and powdered sugar keep the conversation going. Like surrogate brothers, the Heads debate everything from the Big Apple (I hate New York, Sometimes I wish I was in New York) to the Pixies/Nirvana dichotomy.

Nevermind was a little more accessible than the Pixies stuff, and I was 13!" Summers says, when attacked for not giving Frank Black a chance.

"But you're 24 now," Kernevich says, smiling.

"When I listened to them back then I made my decision."

With that barb, the argument ends and talk finally turns to business. In just two years, The Heads of State has grown from an extension of R5 Productions (producing posters for shows as disparate as The Dillinger Escape Plan and Cat Power) to a small business with an impressive Rolodex of clients, ranging from Tiger Style Records to the Troc. (This is their first interview, so there's an understandable concern of being viewed as professionals, not amateurish, post-art-school kids whose DIY ethics eclipse their business sense.)

"One of our goals is to do posters for bigger people, not only for exposure but out of respect," Kernevich says. "If I could do a poster for Elvis Costello, I would love it."

What if Limp Bizkit offered $25,000 to revamp their backwards-cap-and-beer-gut image? "If we came up with a really smart design, we could change the rap-metal genre forever," Kernevich says, matter-of-factly. "We could make it design-savvy, with birds and clouds and lightning bolts."

"I'd do the next Sum 41 album," Summers jokes.

As with many successful duos, The Heads of State are perfectly matched foils. Summers is the extrovert with brown shaggy hair and a hankering for Megadeth's Killing Is My Business. Kernevich is reserved, often stopping to calculate his thoughts before speaking. He listens to sports talk radio when designing. His hair is short and black, his clothes, a simple red hoodie and black T-shirt.

Together, their personalities complement rather than clash and their preferences in design -- Summer prefers iconic images; Kernevich, collages -- help "motivate" one another's development as artists.

"Sometimes we have to arm-wrestle, sometimes it's a discussion," says Summers. "And sometimes it's just like, "What the hell are you thinking? You aren't going to put that on a poster.'"

Gentle poking and prodding is a daily occurrence. Take Kernevich's recent Death Cab for Cutie design. "Dustin's like, "Waterfalls, hearts in the air, angels coming down from the sky? Stop,'" Kernevich says, nodding his head with each syllable. Eight tries later, the poster emerged refined and with most of its original flavor intact.

Conversely, Summers took some criticism when constructing the Tiger Style Records showcase poster for this year's CMJ conference.

"My idea was to have the Statue of Liberty's arm coming out of a manhole," he says, grinning.

That's it?

"This is the CMJ showcase in Manhattan, [with] some of our favorite bands, like American Analog Set and Ida, and he says the Statue of Liberty is going to come out of the sewer," Kernevich says, cocking his head in Summers' direction. "But he did it and it looks really badass. That's the dynamic that happens. I need to trust him to pull it off and vice versa."

"It can be a train wreck if you work at it alone," Summers adds.

Trust has been essential since the two met in their senior year at Temple's Tyler School of Art. The Heads of State was founded in the fall following graduation. After months of interviewing, they both had decent day jobs but a sense of stifled creativity.

So The Heads of State was formed, their first poster being an R5/Dillinger Escape Plan show. The elongated design hinges on a shovel, simply suggesting the burying the band does with its premeditated guitar violence and layers of white noise. It earned accolades and a onetime Dillinger T-shirt deal.

Business continued to pick up as silk-screened poster after poster rolled out of Kevin Mercer's Largemammal Prints in Pine Hill, N.J. Mercer's sometimes called the "third Head of State." He praises the duo's handiwork: "It's great to see those big hand-printed posters commanding attention among the wasteland of photocopied press-photo fliers and fluorescent handbills. To me it makes that show seem more like an event than just a couple of bands playing for their friends and a disinterested bartender."

Over time, Kernevich and Summers found their styles melding into a similar set of minimalist cues: soft lines, gentle curves and a paint box of comforting pastel tones. Kernevich calls it a "weird aesthetic combination of '70s and '80s punk-rock fliers with refined theater posters." There's also the aforementioned preponderance of clouds, hearts and lightning bolts, which are now "banned" from their repertoire.

"We are going to start charging a cloud fee," Kernevich says, though he is quick to admit the lush chamber-pop of Belle & Sebastian could call for a "cloud made of hearts."

"We make jokes about clouds and hearts, but I think as a designer you can't fall back on those things," Kernevich adds. "You have to be progressive."

The most promising sign of progress has been The Heads of State's healthy relationship with Scottish rockers Idlewild. What began with a spark of interest at the South by Southwest festival in March quickly evolved into offers to do T-shirt and poster designs (including the band's entire tour with Pearl Jam). Before anyone realized it, The Heads of State style became Idlewild's image, enveloping the music in moody pictures of sparse trees and lost fingerprints. If talks become contractual soon, the next step may be working on the artwork for Idlewild's next album. Also coming soon are spots in Paul Grushkin's concert poster tome, The Art of Rock 2, and a book presented by HOW magazine, which asks each artist to reinterpret the work of an unnamed peer.

So, what's next, advertising gigs?

"We would do them for something cool, but not Neutrogena skin care," Summers says, citing a Diesel Jeans plan that fell through.

"It's hard to see ourselves growing and yet still stay within this scene," Kernevich adds, in a serious, determined tone. "We're still able to embrace that work ethic, but we're just getting started."