Well, since it’s been live now for a couple of days, I figured I’d go ahead and tell you about our new custom-designed WordPress theme here on GaragePunk.com. Basically, this was the final step in a complete design overhaul here that began earlier this year when we unveiled the “GRGPNK” fuzzbox logo on our podcast feed and Myspace page, and it’s now in line with new look of The Hideout and other various enclaves of the GaragePunk.com global industrial complex, and you’ve no doubt seen some of the art featured prominently on several podcast posts over the past few months.

The guy that came up with all of this great artwork is Röntgen (otherwise known as Sebastian Klebe). He first contacted me last November with his idea about creating a GaragePunk “corporate” design for a school graphic design project. His idea was to create old-school punk-style, xeroxed artwork in black and white with one other color to accentuate the design. I even recall him using the phrase “fucked up and photocopied” at one point. The concept and his initial designs looked fucking great to me (I’ve always dug that style of xeroxed, low-budget artwork, anyway) so I gave him the green light to proceed and told him that I’d be more than happy to adopt the concept on the site when the project was finished.

I was going to try and tell you a little bit more about Röntgen, but I thought I’d just let him do that himself:

I’m 29 years old and live in Hagen/Westfalia, Germany. I am studying graphic design and started the GaragePunk.com thing for a college course in conceptional design (I was listening to the GaragePunk Podcasts a lot while working, so this was obvious). The idea was to create a raw design where all elements are reduced to the absolute minimum, no silly curlicues or superfluous effects (just like the music) and so I used the big white torn sections to transport the information, and put the wild and noisy aspects of lo-fi rock’n'roll to the image plane, containing tons of ready-made images from the pop culture around the music.

One part of the project was to create a website, and because I have no idea about how the modern media works I asked my friend, Jan Eckhoff, to help me realize the website. He’s a freelancer making a living with public relations stuff and he’s doing a lot of shit for the local punk scene in hagen, organizing concerts, writing for fanzines, all that.

Besides this thing I do a lot of rock’n'roll graphic artwork like record covers, shirts and concert/gig posters, and I also play in a rock’n'roll band called The Separates. My own website (www.amazingxrayvision.com) will be online soon, but at the moment you only find a link to my gigposters site and an email address.

If you dig Röntgen’s work as much as I do and would like to own a limited-edition, two-colored, screen-printed “GaragePunk.com” poster exactly like the one at the top of this post (23″x33″, limited to 30 copies, signed and numbered), shoot him a message via the Hideout. They’re just $10 plus postage and handling.

If you would like to get in touch with Jan (the guy who applied Röntgen’s art to WordPress), email mail@janeckhoff.de.