Halfbrick, AKA Sam W Morris, is the lead designer and web chap at Prima Rosa, he also has a very important job of making sure all the music we release passes his VERY high standards! I know you want to know more about the man behind the design…

What do you do at prima rosa?

I’m the designer/webmonkey for Prima Rosa and quality control for the music! Like it says up there!

How did you get involved?

I’ve been doing bits and piece’s for Prima Rosa for a while now. I started off  as sound engineer on some early DCI tracks, but then everyone caught on to how bad I was at that so they let me push some pixels around for them instead! I met Ben while studying for my degree at dBs Music many moons ago now, and we’ve kind of been partners in crime every since. It’s great being involved as I love Prima Rosa’s output, and I get to hear it all before everyone else. What more could a fan want?!

What’s your design philosophy for halfbrick? Who has inspired this philosophy?

My philosophy is keep it simple keep it stupid – mainly because I’m pretty bad at drawing! But in terms of influences it’s a real mix bag, in my youth (I’m nearly 30 now! ) I was a full time skater and into my hip-hop culture big style, so street art has a massive influence over my work, I love bold lines and simple blocks of colour. Street artist like banksy, Sheapard Fairy, Buff Monster, Dalek and the 123klan.
In terms of designers I’m very much in the bauhaus/swiss school, Dieter Rams is my design hero (I also wish he was my grandad). Like dieter I believe design lead thinking can and will change our world for the better.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m just in the early stages of a project working with COLLATONE. It’s a booklet website for his latest ep, a kind of online browse and listen. Should be good, watch this space. I’ve also just started up an ongoing personnel project called twelve[05] , the project consists of me taking a picture of what ever I’m doing at 12.05 pm for a year. It will be a strange cross section of my life, and maybe very boring! but thats a risk I’m willing to take.

I like that –>
twelve05.tumblr.com
www.collatone.com

Who is rocking your design world at the moment?

At the moment I’m kind of in love with Anthony Burrills , the paper stock he’s chosen combined with the wooden block letter press is so tactile and just has a real cared for feel to it. In todays throw away plastic/digital world there’s something very reassuring about his work.

I’ve also been digging Andy Gilmore’s work lately, he created the artwork for Africa Hitech’s album on warp records. His simple geometric shapes combined with the palette he uses really blow’s me away.

anthonyburrill.com
crowquills.com

Who is rocking your music world at the moment?

Apart from of course DCI’s new album, ‘Take Me With You’, I’ve been getting into Thundercat, Ghostpoet, Floating Points, The National and Gang Colours and I heard this new album by Crewsdon today that really got me nodding my head at my computer.

What’s the future for halfbrick?

Who can tell, I’m going to continue to try and work with cool people and to create cool things. That’s all I can hope for!

What’s the future for Prima Rosa, what’s your expectation of this label and music community?

Judging by what I’ve herd and seen lately I think Prima Rosa has bright future. I actually think in generally it’s never been a better time for independent music labels to push throughout to the fans out there. The internet and social networking in particular has giving consumers more and more choice and if you have a good story/product to sell they will find it and will propagate from there.  I see Prima Rosa doing some great new mix media/interactive realises soon as well and that’s really exiting for me!

halfbrick tweets at @halfbrick23
and blogs at  halfbrick.tumblr.com