Tom Waits Typography Video By Jackie Lay

Two things I love: creative design and Tom Waits. So it goes without saying that Jackie Lay’s brilliant typography video set to the Tom Waits song “Eggs and Sausage” makes me happy.

“Eggs and Sausage was my favorite project yet at SVA (School of Visual Arts), for a class taught by typographer Gail Anderson and motion graphics designer Dan Savage,” said Lay. “We each had to make a black and white music video in Aftereffects that used typography only.”

Lay told me she chose Tom Waits’ “Eggs and Sausage,” from his 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner, because the lyrics are so tangible. “They immediately inspire visuals with the words alone,” she added.

The photos at the beginning of the video are diners in New York City between 14th and 23rd streets, shot the night before the project was due and composited in Photoshop until early the next morning. “That whole segment was a last minute effort to capture diner nostalgia and it ended up being my favorite part of the video,” said Lay.

Check below to read the rest of my interview with Lay and watch the excellent Tom Waits Typography Video!

“I didn’t want to be too literal with the imagery,” Lay remarked about the project, “but I did follow the loose narrative arc in the song of a man going to a late-night diner, ordering his meal off the menu and then lamenting over his unrequited love on napkins, finished off with the waitress bringing the check.”

Lay points out that the menu segment was done with stop-motion and the sign remains in her kitchen today. “The napkin scrawls are my own disheveled handwriting (dramatized for effect) and the waitress check was written by a chirpy roommate of mine,” she added.

Awarded a Certificate of Typographic Excellence by the Type Directors Club, Lay’s “Eggs and Sausage” is equally clever and cool, the perfect dose of motion graphics set to a classic, Tom Waits song that, as it turns out, is an ideal musical companion to highlight Lay’s design talents.