Jerrod Landon Porter on his design work for Mayday Parade and the origins of "Pentagram Cat"

Whether you've noticed it or not, chances are there’s an album in your library or a t-shirt in your closet with artwork designed by JERROD LANDON PORTER. Porter got his big break working with fellow Tallahassee, Florida mainstays Mayday Parade, which has led to work with Cartel, Never Shout Never, Go Radio, Lemuria and a slew of others. And when he’s not at home creating, he’s on the road with Of Montreal managing their merchandise.

In addition to his work with the above bands, Porter is an accomplished artist and designer in other realms. He’s done work for local businesses and neighborhoods all over Florida and beyond and his latest design, the “pentagram cat” (right), became an Internet meme overnight and is now available as a t-shirt thanks to Threadless.

AP chatted with Porter from Tallahassee about the many hats he wears, the origins of the pentagram cat and how he got into designing for bands and labels.

Interview: Bryne Yancey

Let’s start with the Threadless thing—the pentagram cat. Talk about how that came to be and the origins of the design.
Yeah, if I start blabbing too much in these answers, you’re allowed to say “Cool story, bro” and then I’ll just immediately stop talking and we’ll move onto the next thing. [Laughs.] It came from when I was pre-teen age—12ish. I had a disposable camera and I was just killing film taking pictures of my cat. The cat just happened to be cleaning itself right when I was snapping a shot and its body made the shape of a pentagram. I had this idea for years, so I wanted to make that into something.

Recently, I was driving around with somebody and telling them the idea, and then I got into an argument with them a couple days later and I was like, “I am going to find this picture and draw it.” I couldn’t find the picture, so it was really bumming me out. So I was like, “I’m just going to draw it and put it up online and everybody is going to laugh at it and I’m going to feel way better after having this argument.”

Then, I woke up the next morning and somebody was like, “Did you know that your image went viral? It’s all over the internet.” I had to jump in front of it because I didn’t want it to end up in some cheesy t-shirt company type thing—you know, they change it a little bit and steal your idea. It’s my deceased cat from my childhood and I didn’t want it to end up in something stupid, so I just submitted it to Threadless to see if they would bite on it. After I did that, Dave Navarro [of Jane’s Addiction] posted it on his blog and it just kind of blew up. It became [a meme] and ended up just winning like crazy on Threadless.

The way Threadless works is that people go on there and vote on designs and usually when a t-shirt wins, they judge it from zero to five—it’s a steady incline from zero to five on the votes. I looked at mine and from zero to four it was just flat across the board and then five was like a smokestack that just shot up. I knew that it was going to win after that.

Are those are currently in production or have they already been made?
Yeah, they started selling them on Monday and it’s doing pretty well. I work for a lot of bands, so I’m mailing them to bands right now to wear. I sent some to John [Nolan] in Taking Back Sunday and Sheena [Ozzella] in Lemuria. I think [I have] a couple other bands I haven’t nailed down on whether or not they want to wear them, but some others are going to wear them at Warped Tour and some other places.

Talk a little about the design stuff you’ve done for bands. How did you even get into that realm? I think that’s something a lot of people are curious about.
When you’re in high school and want to impress girls, you start a band and I was a nerdy comic book reader, so I was like, “I need something that’s cool to do.” I was going to college for politics because I was way into moderate/liberal leaning politics and had a band. We needed graphic design and I was an artist, so I started making stuff for our band and then when we would play with other bands, they would see it and be like, “Oh, where’d you get that done at?” and I was like, “Oh, I made it.” Then I would do their stuff and they would go on tour and other bands would see it.

It just became this snowballing effect where other bands just started calling or emailing me. Most of those bands were nobodies and then they would get popular and other bands that were [already] popular—it was just a big snowballing effect. Then record labels started hitting me up. For a while I was the primary designer at Doghouse Records and recently I’ve been doing a couple of things for Fearless because of the Mayday Parade connection. It’s as simple as that—I needed something for my band and it just snowballed to other bands.

You mentioned the Mayday Parade connection. What is that, exactly?
They were a couple years younger than me here in town and I was already an established designer in Florida. We sat at a Wendy’s one day and pitched ideas back and forth doing their EP cover when they weren’t even signed. I gave them my idea and I went around and took a bunch of pictures of payphones and had my friends posing for pictures and a couple weeks later they got signed to Fearless and Fearless got the design and now it’s like the first thing they put out on that. Then they got bumped up to a major label and the major label was getting them an artist to do their second two albums. Then we were just hanging out at a bar and they were like, “Man, we wish we had more control over the artwork.” They were just saying this to me and then they were like, “Oh, you did our first record and you’re a graphic designer that actually does major label and indie label designs. Will you do our next EP?” That was the Valdosta EP. They were so happy with that they were like, “We want to do a comic book for our next release [2011’s Mayday Parade, left] and you do comic books,” so that’s where that came from. I sort of did stuff for them when they were nobodies. I did their first three shirts and their first EP [2006's Tales Told By Dead Friends]. Then they went on Warped Tour, got popular and signed [to Fearless].

I’m guessing that’s kind of how your other stuff you’re doing for Fearless happened.
Yeah, exactly. Fearless and a couple other labels, too. I was doing stuff for Doghouse and I’m sure every single indie/pop punk band knows who David Conway is, who is the A&R guy for Doghouse and works with Working Group Management. He’ll just email me out of the blue and be like, “Hey, I need you to do this.” I did the first couple things for Never Shout Never. I did one of his first EPs [2009's Happy digital single, right] and a couple t-shirts and a poster and things like that. Stuff like that.

I make it a point of being really nice. I think people like working with somebody who’s not a total asshole, which is where my logo came into play. There was a band on Doghouse called Feable Weiner, and I was doing stuff for them and they would always feed me email ideas and at the end of it, one of the guys would always say, “I heart JLP.” That’s where my logo came from. I didn’t even come up with the logo—some band did.

What other stuff are you doing Fearless in the future?
I can’t say the name of the band, but they contacted me recently and I’m going to be doing something that’s coming out this summer. The band is already on the label and I guess they wanted something a little more mature looking for their new album cover. I do have something with Fearless coming out in the next coming months.

Talk a little about your label and the next 7-inch you’re putting out.
I’ve had this record label for a year or two now—it’s named after my neighborhood in Tallahassee, which is Levy Park. We basically just put out friends’ projects and the first physical release on vinyl that we did was—well, it wasn’t the first physical release, but it was the first thing not involving Tallahassee—was the guitar player for Coheed and Cambria [Travis Stever] had a side project called Davenport Cabinet and it’s a split between him and this band that was on Doghouse called One Small Step For Landmines. We did a split 12-inch for that and then took a break from it because I was so busy with graphic design and now I’m kind of jumping back into it.

The next thing we’re releasing is by an acoustic grindcore band called Help It. The 7-inch is called 999 Lives, but the name of the album is upside down, so it looks like 666 and it’s going to come on glow-in-the-dark vinyl. But yeah, it’s an acoustic grindcore band that’s got a cat for a lead singer and the cat’s name is Beezer. Unfortuntely, two weeks after it was recorded, the cat got rolled by a car, so we wanted to capture an homage to this cat. We’re going to release it via Kickstarter and it’s going to come on glow-in-the-dark vinyl and with these brochures—I’m using some of the money from the Threadless campaign to make these brochures on how to properly adopt pets and awesome things you can do with your pet like have pet parties, go to dog parks, and not be a jerk and throw your pet away when the semester’s over. You’ll get that and a bunch of stickers and buttons. There’s an animal rights part to it, too.

So you’re going on tour with Of Montreal. When is that happening?
It starts in March—the tour runs from Mar. 7 to Apr. 7. We’re doing South By Southwest and then doing a loop around the country in support of their new album and I’ll be doing merch management for them.

How did you get into that?
I have known them for a while. Half of them lived in Tallahassee and half of them lived in Athens, Georgia. The singer’s [Kevin Barnes] brother went to Florida State and I made friends with him and one day he just called me up—I’d done tour management and merch management—and asked me if I wanted to do that. I’m a pretty easy going on tour, so they like that and I like sleeping in a bunk and sitting in a van.

Tell us about your website redesign you have coming up.
Since I have all these high-profile things coming up, I’m launching a new website that’s going to feature a meme generator. I can’t say what the subject of it is yet because I had my credit card phished, so I can’t buy the domain until next week. I’m going to have a bunch of [new] things like links to Stay Rad buttons and my record label. It’ll be pushing t-shirts that I make like my neighborhood t-shirt and the new Lemuria shirt that I designed. It’s just kind of a hub for all of the things I’m doing. I just made it a little more centered so people can get to my other stuff on it. It also has years of artwork on it because after six months I just hate everything that I do, but for some reason, I’m really OCD about it and I like to not forget that I made that stuff. It’s a growing experience.

Speaking of your neighborhood, what inspired you to make that sign for Levy Park (above) and then put it up without city approval?
Okay, well I’m going to talk about some really illegal stuff right now, but some very punk friends I had stole our crappy neighborhood sign that the city made. It was one of those really bad aluminum signs and they stole it years ago. After that I   thought, “Why haven’t they replaced it with a nicer sign?” and I felt kind of guilty because my friends took it, so I decided that I was going to do the city and the neighborhood a favor and since I do a lot of wood cutting—like stencil or painted artwork on wood cuts—I just decided to make a neighborhood sign and go up there with a drill and some epoxy and just put it up and not even ask the city or anybody if I could do it.

My friends went up there with a six-pack of beer and drilled this thing into it. At 6PM while they were doing it, somebody driving by called them “fucking hipsters.” [Laughs.] My friends who work for this bussing company—they drive Go Radio and Mayday Parade and Breathe Carolina and all those bands around—own a t-shirt shop here in town and they were selling the t-shirts for me and Levy Park had just started The Neighborhood Association. They emailed me saying, “Hey, we kind of want to leave your sign as the logo for the neighborhood,” which is totally backwards because you’re supposed to have a neighborhood association make the sign, but the neighborhood association wanted to adopt the sign. alt