As the Pacific Northwest stood still, waiting in our homes for Covid to pass over, music remained one positive constant. The community power of our local KEXP (the best damned radio station in the world) and its incredible DJs provided hope, energy, and an amazing soundtrack during a bizarre time. In particular, the morning DJ John Richards lead the charge each day with his honest emotional connections and top-quality music taste.
In appreciation of KEXP, I created a version of the famous Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" cover dedicated to the work of our beloved DJs. I gave John the place of honor, replacing Queen Elizabeth II with his likeness.
The work here was twofold: the portrait and the layout. To give John the old-school printing style seen in the original God Save the Queen cover, I used Adobe Photoshop's mode tools to reduce the colors to a duotone, then converted the image to a bitmap for a reduced quality look.
Once I had the look of John's likeness in the Queen's style, the rest was placement, color, and fonts. The cover uses a central oval to contain its content - made easy using Photoshop's mask system. Color overlay effects allowed me to assign the blue and off-white to the darks and lights respectively. Finally, the classic cut-and-paste method enabled me to use most of the same font from the original cover. The message is clear: God Save the Music!