Designer of the Day: Illlord tha Ques

I will be profiling designers hopefully every day for the next week. After that it will become "Designer of the Week".
This blog is a work in progress.

It's rare when an artist creates imagery that can come to define an emerging genre of music. You'll remember Blue Note Records distinct style of covers that relayed your eyes to the smooth jazz that lay inside. The emergence of the covers reinvented the way music could influence design. Soon, the distinct simplicity of the Blue Note covers was popularized and began to transcend genres from rock to pop. When the smoke cleared, it found a home with the ever evolving hip-hop scene. Now, as hip-hop producers begin to enter the realm of electronic leaving the dusty needles behind, a new artist has emerged to put a style to the beats. It's Shanghai's Illlord tha Ques and his crew LCP United. No one knows a lot of biographical info about tha Ques but here's the scoop on his outlet.

Created in 2004 by 3 art directors, the "LCP United" is a crew of artists mainly based between Paris and Tokyo. We use various influences and talents associations to develop exclusive visual experiences through print, motion design and broadcasting.
-http://www.lcp-united.com/about.php

Illord's most popular work is the colorful and curvy caricatures of hip-hop's most influential, forward-thinking and independent producers and MCs. These portraits are more odes to greatness than comic representations and their combination of bubble graffiti with comic-like fluidity produce a representation that seems to combine the producers physical appearance with his distinct sound and style of production. The producers themselves love it and the and the portraits have begun to show up all over Myspace and tour t-shirts.

While these images are the most familiar from Illlord, his work doesn't stop there. Some of my favorite images come from his Dusty Path series. Here, Ques illustrates what I can only describe as the Cali-haze style. Disjoint yet smooth, there is a ton to look at up close but the true beauty comes from the image as a whole.
LCP uses these graphics to promote their radio show BTS radio. Small scribbles of reoccurring shout outs build together and grow into a vine-like mountain.

Here's more ish:

The images are unique and illustrate perfectly the bumpy and beautiful beats of electro-hip hop producers like Flying Lotus and Samiyam.

As these kind of producers emerge onto the scene, Illord picks his favorites and beings to sketch. I imagine making these graphics is similar to the process the beat-makers take themselves.

Start with a scattered array of tools and a creative idea. Before long, a complex brain storm of a blunted mind flows into a piece of art with a unique style.

So definite ups to Illord tha Ques and the whole LCP United for giving this new style of hip-hop a face.

Heres the advice: spark the blunt, put on Lotus' "1983", peep the man's whole portfolio on the LCP site.

For further studies:
http://www.myspace.com/illlord
http://www.lcp-united.com/
http://www.myspace.com/flyinglotus
http://www.myspace.com/samiyambeats
http://www.myspace.com/beatdimensions
http://www.myspace.com/fromlawithlove

thanks-hit me up with more info/questions on Illlord
-Justin