David Sockrider: Vol. 7 | Frequent Flyers

by Stacy Zimmer
 
Welcome to the seventh installment of Frequent Flyers, where we highlight, document and preserve the art behind music. This week, we feature artist David Sockrider.
 
"Total creative freedom in graphic design is rare. After a day of being dictated what to do at a full-time job, I found a creative outlet in show posters. I suppose I could always try charging more or try harder to sell posters, but In the end, all I really want for most of these posters is to create something cool to hang on my wall and a free ticket or two," Sockrider says.
 
Art has always been important to Sockrider, who began building his resume at 5 by painting a mural for his kindergarten class. In the fourth grade, he created his first commissioned piece, an image of E.T. valued at $10. He became interested in logos and graphic art when he got into skateboarding and BMX in junior high.
 
When it came time to focus on a career path, Sockrider chose commercial art and started college at UNL, focusing on fine arts. While working at the Nebraska Bookstore, he discovered Family Dog and Jimi Hendrix posters from the '60s Bay Area music scene and became a fan of Alphonse Mucha's poster and the Art Nouveau style. "I thought these posters were some of the coolest art I'd ever seen," he says. After transferring to UNK for graphic design, he started using Photoshop to create and manipulate graphics. He's since built his skills working at advertising agencies, screen printing shops, television stations and an engineering college, designing everything from business cards to bilboards to interactive 3D animation.
 
Over the years, Sockrider has created a creative technique that is evident in his work. After tiring of all-computer designs, he went back to creating by hand through sketching and painting the image, photographing the product and finishing with minor tweaks and text from the computer.
 
Sockrider got his start in show posters after winning the Wakarusa poster contest in 2005. Sockrider explains his inspiration for his work below:
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Wakarusa Poster Contest Winner
An illustration of their tagline, 'Where the music meets mother nature' with a Art Nouveau feel. Within the scene is our camp from the previous year with me on my longboard and some hidden symbolism about a storm we were in with 60 mph winds in our tents.

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"I saw a video on YouTube of a color-changing octopus, so I decided I'd better put one in a poster. I really liked the striped patterning on the tentacles."

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"For this one, I imagined the words 'Lincoln Calling' and what that meant. I had been thinking of that movie, Wild Wild West, and the giant robot spider they had in that. I thought, 'what if Abraham Lincoln came back to town as a giant, steam-powered robot and he wasn't in a good mood?'"

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"The graphic is influenced by old Family Dog/Jimi Hendrix posters."

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To check out more of David Sockrider's work, visit his website here.

Email your suggestions for our next Frequent Flyer artist to Stacy Zimmer at stlyzimmer@gmail.com.