Shifty Milano Artwork

Artwork done for the music project known as Shifty Milano & His Orchestra, which is billed as “an ongoing project that blurs the lines of performance art, original music, graphic design, and fictional literature.”

The album cover, with its distinctive red and blue dots, was designed to be an obvious homage to a classic Louis Armstrong record made for the movie The Glenn Miller Story. 

While they're listed as being faded pages from a fictitious magazine entitled Syncopate, it was insisted that the design be similar to a real-life music magazine known as Metronome, in this case the layout and look from 1938.

"We want something that looks like an old newspaper clipping," they said. "And don't forget to make it look like an old newspaper clipping."

The background photos are restriction-free images from the Library of Congress. The dimensions were made for use in YouTube videos.

The same dimensions as above, this image was designed to be for use in a YouTube video for the song "The Ghost Train."

The final image with the newspaper clipping and magazine pages. It was used in one YouTube video but I'm not sure if it will make its appearance in any future videos.

I'm Dreaming of a Vintage Christmas

A few days ago I glanced at my wife’s Facebook feed as she was perusing through profiles of friends from high school. Something got my attention rather quickly: Most of their family Christmas photographs looked the same. Same outfits, same poses, same backgrounds.

I got the idea to make something a little different. I wanted to do something that was dated yet timeless, simple yet elegant. 

Drawing inspiration from three old photos that we found in a book purchased at a local antiques store, we decided to recreate the kind of Christmas images that would have made us want to spend Christmas with “these” people. It was an era when the newspaper was still important, your Sunday best was worn almost every day, and the radio offered you your sports, news, and music.

Christmas Belt Drive

Artwork for the satirical performance art project WHSK.

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Being like everyone else — even if it means living outside your means — is quite popular. This was made in response.

Be a Leader - Not a Sheep

Based on a WPA syphilis poster. This Forties Factory version is just the clean version with an aged look.

Anchor Tattoo Poster

Anchors are made to sink. It’s their job. Sorry to burst your bubble.

It's Not "'Murica" or "'Merica"

I’m not sure how mispronouncing the name of your country somehow became a form of patriotism, but if looking uneducated is now a way of being “more” American, I’ll sooner look “less” American by proudly calling our country the United States of America.

Dress Like An Adult Poster

Done after a recent trip to Walmart, in which my wife and I quickly discovered that we were almost the only two shoppers who were not wearing sweatpants or stained T-shirts. The original was much cleaner, but the theme and look easily lent itself to the Forties Factory concept.

Two-Party System Poster

Originally done without the aged look, this was probably the first unofficial Forties Factory poster, hence the old RDM Media logo.

Birth of The Forties Factory

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself making “aged” artwork for different projects. Realizing that much of it falls into the same category, I’ve decided to begin releasing it under the same banner: The Forties Factory.

Almost all the work was done for personal use, all of which has been non-commercial. Some of it has been inspired by old WPA posters, big-band posters, or things that I’ve come across in old books or antique stores.