Immortal Melodies (dead)

As part of my own experiments, I got around to lasering some items today. I realised that the machinery's cutting funtion is different to the etching function in as much as the software traces the basic outlines of the jpeg. This also offered the option of altering the contours of the outlines so I further simplified the serif stencil-friendly typeface I had used. It ended up bolder and more 'custom'. You can see how it was used on the 'Immortal Melodies' 7" that finally had its date with destiny. The message reads "WHAT GOES AROUND".

Immortal Melodies

I bought this old 7" classical release and really needed to document it as tomorrow it has a date with a laser-cutter. It's a bit of a shame really as I love how it currently looks: from the layout, logo and use of colour through to the grubby old Sellotape holding the back together. The title - 'Immortal Melodies' - might suggest otherwise but, sorry little record, all good things must come to an end.

ALT/1977: We Are Not Time Travellers

Uploaded to: The Behance Network
Created: March 2010
By: Alex Varanese

"What would you do if you could travel back in time? Assassinate Marilyn Monroe? Go on a date with Hitler? Obviously. But here's what I'd do after that: grab all the modern technology I could find, take it to the late 70's, superficially redesign it all to blend in, start a consumer electronics company to unleash it upon the world, then sit back as I rake in billions, trillions, or even millions of dollars.

I've explored that idea in this series by re-imagining four common products from 2010 as if they were designed in 1977: an mp3 player, a laptop, a mobile phone and a handheld video game system. I then created a series of fictitious but stylistically accurate print ads to market them, as well as a handful of abstract posters (you know, just for funsies).

I've learned that there is no greater design element than the anachronism. I've learned that the strongest contrast isn't spatial or tonal but historical. I've learned that there's retro, and then there's time travel."

Ian Anderson on vinyl

“Vinyl records, like stupid 2mm high, 300mm wide holey plastic gods for the faithless, have a bizarre place in their adherents’ Midi-belief systems with collectors and neo-Luddite DJs expecting us non-believers/users to justify our own Babylonian misdemeanours for using, let’s face it, more conceptually profound mediums of music dissemination.”

Ian Anderson, Grafik, Issue #185, pg 61

The Count & Sinden - Mega Mega Mega

The Count & Sinden's album, Mega Mega Mega, was released this week. The vinyl edition is another one that straddles the idea of physical collectability and technological convenience - albeit with bonus content. A gatefold double record set includes a coupon to download a special MP3/WAV package which includes full album instrumentals plus two brand new tracks. Out on Domino with design by Richard Robinson.

Formats

A parcel arrived today from the very helpful Alan at Tapeline. It contained an assortment of formats, cases and labels which I'll start experimenting with over the next couple of weeks.

Yasunao Tone - Solo for Wounded CD

I pretty much overdosed on the noise/art collision at the Bigger Than Words conference in July. Subsequently I was going to try and avoid looking at that side of things for this project. However, if we're talking about unplayable media and the (mis)use of formats in general, then there is this huge overlap with some of the ideas that were highlighted there.

Echoing discussion that came up via the Digital Noise panel [the one I chaired] is the Solo For Wounded CD project by Yasunao Tone. I first encountered this in the pages of the Background Noise book and it fits in with some of the interesting research into digital manipulation and the technological 'glitch'. Here the Japanese experimental musician treated/damaged the surfaces of CD-Rs before recording what was read by the CD player.

Adventurous listeners who worship at the altars of Merzbow and Fennesz might be interested in the actual sounds produced. I'm more inspired by the destructive processes and the aesthetic qualities of the manipulated discs: especially in terms of it helping to definine the physical format as an exclusively collectable decorative, rather than functional, item. Plus there are potentially other influences documented in Caleb Kelly's book [which came up on a Google image search while looking for examples of Yasunao Tone's CDs]:

Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction
Caleb Kelly


From the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first, artists and musicians manipulated, cracked, and broke audio media technologies to produce novel sounds and performances. Artists and musicians, including John Cage, Nam June Paik, Yasunao Tone, and Oval, pulled apart both playback devices (phonographs and compact disc players) and the recorded media (vinyl records and compact discs) to create an extended sound palette. In Cracked Media, Caleb Kelly explores how the deliberate utilization of the normally undesirable (a crack, a break) has become the site of productive creation. Cracked media, Kelly writes, slides across disciplines, through music, sound, and noise. Cracked media encompasses everything from Cage’s silences and indeterminacies, to Paik’s often humorous tape works, to the cold and clean sounds of digital glitch in the work of Tone and Oval. Kelly offers a detailed historical account of these practices, arguing that they can be read as precursors to contemporary new media.

Kelly looks at the nature of recording technology and the music industry in relation to the crack and the break, and discusses the various manifestations of noise, concluding that neither theories of recording nor theories of noise offer an adequate framework for understanding cracked media. Connecting the historical avant-garde to modern-day turntablism, and predigital destructive techniques to the digital ticks, pops, and clicks of the glitch, Kelly proposes new media theorizations of cracked media that focus on materiality and the everyday.

“Caleb Kelly’s Cracked Media is a welcome addition to the growing body of critical writing on the role of sound in the history of modern and postmodern art. It helpfully extends Douglas Kahn’s monumental Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts by focusing on a powerful strain of contemporary sonic art: the creative mis-use of audio playback technologies. As Kelly ably theorizes it, the ‘crack’ is a productive break that articulates past and future, archaeology and innovation, analog and digital. Hence, this book combines an exhaustive survey and taxonomy of recent experiments with turntables and CD technology (Oval, Christian Marclay, Yasunao Tone, etc.) with a detailed genealogy of these practices that traces them back to earlier moments of sonic experimentation (Futurism, Fluxus, John Cage, etc.). Informed, but not overloaded, by theoretical accounts of phonography and digital media, Kelly helpfully sorts out what is at issue in cracked sound and places this at the center of contemporary debates about art and technology.”


Caleb Kelly is a lecturer at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney

Brian Eno - Small Craft On A Milk Sea

Electronica/ambient nerds will currently be salivating over this.
352gsm.
Phwoar.

New album on Warp Records
out 2nd November 2010 (15th November in the UK)
With Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams

* Limited Edition Box Set
* Collectors' Edition Box Set
* CD & High Quality Download
Limited Edition Box Set (Heavyweight vinyl, 2xCD, Lithographic Print)

Packaged in a rigid, Birch paper-covered slipcase with printed and foil-blocked cover and spine, this edition includes:

* 180g heavyweight, double disc 12" vinyl pressing of the album, in full-colour, case-bound 12" cover. Lined in crimson stock with foil block.
* CD pressing of the album, along with extra disc containing four extra tracks, in full-colour, case-bound 12" cover. Lined in crimson stock with foil blocked credit sheet.
* High quality 12" square lithographic print of new Brian Eno artwork, printed on 352gsm Mohawk Superfine stock, presented in full-colour, case-bound 12" cover. Lined in crimson stock with tissue paper protection.
* Audiophile quality downloads : 24-bit WAV album AND 320kbps MP3 album delivered digitally on day of release.

Collectors' Edition Box Set (Unique signed, numbered screen print by Brian Eno, Heavyweight vinyl, 2xCD)

This strictly limited edition of 250 worldwide includes everything in the Vinyl Edition with the following, one-of-a-kind additions:

* A one-off, entirely unique and customised 12" square silkscreen print by Brian Eno. A print application of the generative process that Brian has been developing throughout his career, each print will be be a unique combination of screen printed elements by Brian Eno and Nick Robertson. Printed on 330gsm Somerset Radiant White stock, signed and numbered in pencil by Brian Eno. There are no duplicates. The printing process will be fully documented.
* A real copper plate, etched with the title and edition number embedded in the slipcase spine.

*Please note no edition number or specific print can be reserved from this edition. Allocation to customers will be random.

CD

* CD album packaged in an 8 panel digipack
* Bleep customers will receive instant digital downloads following the release date


High Quality Download

24-bit audiophile quality WAV downloads from Bleep.com, 16-bit WAV downloads plus standard MP3/AAC downloads.

Download from Bleep, iTunes, Amazon and other stores from release date

LoAF music packaging

I referenced this series in a general post about Non-Format's work but this really deserves to be mentioned seperately too.

These LoAF releases boast a strong unified aesthetic despite including a variety of different formats and individual artwork. The combination of materials is great in creating the impression of a lo-fi, hand-assembled artefact that turns out to be more of a 'pack' than an individual music release. Plus, aside from the designers' own excellent input, the whole project from the Lo Recordings offshoot is a considered attempt to commission new imagery by other illustrators/artists to compliment particular pieces of music.

More info at http://www.l-o-a-f.com/

LoAF
–
Music packaging
–
2006–2007
–
3" CDs, 5" CDs or 7" vinyl accompanied by art
prints by various artists and image-makers.
Items are enclosed in a sealed plastic documents
envelope attached to a grey board cut to 12" or
16.5" formats, and then silkscreen overprinted.
–
LoAF01 – Music: Vincent Oliver. Art: Ivan Zouravliov
LoAF02 – Music: Motohiro Nakashima. Art: Sergei Sviatchenko
LoAF03 – Music: Charlie Alex March. Art: Yokoland
LoAF04 – Music: Spectac. Art: Manuel Schibli
LoAF05 – Music: Barbed. Art: Paul Winstanley
LoAF06 – Music: Vincent Oliver. Art: Ivan Zouravliov
LoAF07 – Music: Gavouna. Art: Athanasios Argianas
LoAF08 – Music: Batfinks. Art: Hellovon
LoAF09 – Music: Charlie Alex March. Art: Yokoland
LoAF10 – Music: The Lonesomes. Art: Alan Smithee
LoAF11 – Music: Andrea’s Kit. Art: Grandpeople
LoAF12 – Music: Kid Twist. Art: Sam Weber

Greatest Hits by Frank Chimero

Amy sent me a link to a nice project on Frank Chimero's website:

"Self-promotional package about how good music binds us through shared experiences."

Tal Brosh interview

I posted some examples of designer Tal Brosh's portfolio previously. A considerable amount of the work creatively investigates music artwork and is therefore intrinsically linked with the whole area I'm looking at. So I asked about the possibility of doing a quick interview and Tal obliged. So "thanks".

>>

What is your current stance is regarding the reported plight of artwork in this digital era?

I find it difficult to give you an answer that is a general view on the subject. My own personal opinion for the way I experience the subject is I find it difficult to connect to the music the same way when it is just a file on the computer than when I have it as a physical object. I think there is more than one reason to it, the physicality of the album itself, the way of purchase (even if I just get it of amazon, I have to wait for it, unwrap it etc) the image on a piece of paper that I can move around, everything that comes with an album as well. I have a very large digital music library on my computer, both copied from friends or my own CDs but I often just listen to the actual CD or LP. It is also easier to choose music this way.

What do specific music formats symbolise for you: vinyl, tapes, CDs and MP3s. Culturally? Aesthetically? Technologically?

Vinyl symbolizes the best way to communicate with music for me. Its a bit nostalgic and also it makes me feel a bit different from a lot of other people who consume music in a more disposable way.
Tapes - tapes were kinda cool when I was at school but I don't really miss them.
CD - although an ugly form I still like CDs because they are easy to handle and only have one side. Although I like the ritual of changing sides on a vinyl it is a ritual and sometimes its easier to just dump something on the stereo and get uninterrupted 70 minutes.
MP3's - I really don't like music on the computer. On the other hand I LOVE my iPod. There is something really intimate and special in listening to music that way. It is a bit like being alone with your music at home, but having other visuals.

What do you make of the personal investment in and reverence of specific formats? Their fetishism, notalgia, sentimentality, etc?

I think there is something very charming about vinyl collectors, however, it is very clear that this is an 'exotic' hobby these days. There is some sort of antagonism, a need to do something different in these people usually. I respect everybody's way to enjoy music and I think that the reason a lot of people are into MP3s are because they are more of casual listeners. People who are more into their music will probably still have a stereo.

What about the download age? Where do you think this leaves the physical music 'product' in an age where it's not required just to aid distribution?

As I mentioned before I think physical media will become more and more exotic. I always thought people will have the need to hold an album, but when I see my younger brother who NEVER bought a CD in his life although he is really into music, I think I might need to change my mind about it.

And what do you think this means in terms of the earlier assumption that music artwork = packaging? What possibilities do you think this may present for designers?

I think there is a magical connection between music and visual but it might take other formats in the future. I think at some point all digital media will be moving and/or interactive. I think that would also be the case with artwork for music: some sort of hybrid between album artwork and music video.

More info: http://www.talbrosh.com/

Why the music cassette has never died

From: The Times
Date: 18/12/09

Richard Goldsmith, of the upscale hi-fi geeksters’ paradise Audio Gold, dismisses the notion of a a dying format. “I’m not sure there’s any such thing,” he says. Cast your eye around his North London shop, and you can see why he might say such a thing. Walking past turntables and transistors that look like exhibits from a design museum, he shows me a cassette player priced at a bracing £450. It’s made by Nakamichi, who prided themselves on divining hitherto unimagined clarity from the humble C90

The best thing about it, though, is the way it changes tape sides. Through the Perspex window, you can see a mechanism, tantamount to a small robot hand, physically turn the tape around to start playing it. Goldsmith says he would be surprised if the machine is still here by the end of the week. They are, apparently, popular with middle-aged reggae fans.

Tempting as it is to herald the return of the cassette, it appears that the format introduced by Philips as a dictation aid in 1963 never quite went away. This week Island Records announced that sales of the 4,000 cassettes they decided to produce of Words for You had exceeded all expectations. HMV and the leading supermarkets have long since stopped selling tapes, but the album, on which celebrities such Joanna Lumley and Martin Shaw read poetry while classical music trills prettily along in the background, still managed to sell out on Amazon. By contrast, only 746 of the 200,000 copies of Words for You sold have been downloads. Thousands more cassettes are being manufactured in time for Christmas. “What’s exciting,” says an Island spokesman, Ian Brown, “is that we don’t know how big the market is because no one realised there was a demand.”

You can’t help feeling that this has been a howling great oversight. Having worked out that old people are one of the few age groups that will pay for music, Decca threw its weight behind We’ll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn and saw their efforts repaid with a No 1 record. How many more might they have sold if they had also put it out on tape? It’s tempting to smile indulgently at your silver-haired elders as they persist with their old Val Doonican cassettes. It may just be, however, that older people are privy to specialised knowledge that comes only with the passing of the decades. There are some environments in which the tape wins over all other formats.

As the iconically hip, left-of-leftfield guitarist of Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore may be an unlikely bedfellow for the sort of septuagenarians who think Mpegs are what you hang your Mcoats on. But even during the CD’s early supremacy, Moore’s devotion to the cassette never wavered. Four years ago he published Mix Tape: The Art of Cassette Culture, a love letter to what he calls “the most personal of all formats”. Occasionally he produces limited-edition cassette runs of releases on his Ecstatic Peace label. “The cassette offers one of the great listening experiences,” he says. “That friction of the tape against the head is unbeatable. Then you’ve got the aesthetic difference. You find a mixtape that someone has made for you, and there is no mistaking the amount of care and affection that has gone into it.”

By any criteria, Moore’s obsession is extreme. He has thousands of meticulously filed CDs released on cottage-industry imprints with such names as Chocolate Monk and Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers — labels that equate the cassettes’ affordability and apparent obsolescence with their underground credentials. He is not alone. In Camden Market, the must-have accessory of 2009 was the bag designed to look like a cassette.

It’s all very well, but does this sort of loyalty have its basis in anything other than nostalgia? Not if a furious essay that appeared two weeks ago on the American music site Popmatters is anything to go by. Despite left-field releases by the likes of Dirty Projectors and Crystal Castles that sold out their cassette runs, Calum Marsh, author of Reconsidering the Revival of Cassette Tape Culture, insists that “at best, the cassette revival is merely a vacuous fad of no genuine value . . . at worst, a confused, cultural misstep more dangerous than most would care to admit”.

Might it not be that tapes offer something that subsequent technologies have failed to provide? Moore maintains that the CD is a vulnerable format that is designed to be re-bought. Anyone who has tried to keep CDs in a car — you might as well attack them with a cheese knife — must surely concur. On CDs the information is exposed. On cassettes it is protected by a plastic shell. The price of cassettes at my local charity shop — a can’t-give-them-away 20p a throw — suggests that, in the neophilia of the 21st century, these are considerations we may have simply forgotten about.

Since I started relieving Oxfam of their surplus, I have filled my car with albums by the Supremes, Van Morrison, James Brown and Talk Talk. Surprisingly, the cassette era even extends to relatively recent gems such as Radiohead’s Kid A. Better still, the foetal bass and padded cell production of that album’s highlights — Everything in its Right Place, Morning Bell — is perfectly suited to the warm, cocooned ambience of magnetic tape.

Of course, central to the lingering affection that people have for tapes is the fact that you could compile them yourself. “Home taping is killing music,” warned the skull and crossbones on the back of several major label releases in the early 1980s. I still have the first cassette of songs I ever recorded from the radio. Thirty years after I removed it from its case, my red ferric BASF C90 features excerpts from that Sunday night staple Star Choice, in which a celebrity of the day got to be DJ for a couple of hours. Separated only by inter-song banter from the Birmingham City star striker Trevor Francis are such hits as Chicago’s If You Leave Me and ELO’s Living Thing.

Victoria Hesketh, of Little Boots fame, is 16 years younger than me, but even she remembers sourcing her music by a similar means. “Oh, absolutely. You would sit by the tape recorder with your finger poised on the pause button because you’d want to catch it before the DJ started talking.” Take away the technologies of the era and such behaviour was no different from that of ten-year-olds illegally downloading the latest N-Dubz and Chipmunk hits to their computers. So why did it somehow not feel as wrong?

Moore thinks that the moral differential lies in the aesthetic merits of the two formats: “File sharing is utterly unsexy,” he says. “It takes no time at all to knock up a playlist from your iTunes folder and give it to someone.”

He surely has a point, and one that’s reflected in the monetary decline in the value of music. Everything to do with consuming music has become easier. In the past when you compiled a tape for someone, the time spent making it was central to its perceived value. You would also have a fairly good idea that each track followed on smoothly from the last one because the compilation would have been made in real time.

Moore compares DIY compilations to scrimshaws — pieces of whalebone on which voyaging sailors would make ornate carvings. “Sometimes I go to yard sales to buy cassettes compiled by people who are complete strangers to me. You see something that has ‘Marty’s Mix’ scrawled on it in ballpoint pen. You take it home and you don’t know if it’s going to be US post-punk hardcore or Kenny Rogers. Whatever it is, though, I know I’m getting a slice of someone’s life. Cassettes are the only format that can give you that.”

Trevor Jackson interview

From: Computer Arts

With a clear, emotive and purposeful style and an award-winning portfolio, Trevor Jackson has inspired a generation of designers. Garrick Webster meets the renaissance man of graphic design

Sun streams through the blinds at Trevor Jackson’s studio near Old Street in London. He’s worked and lived here for the past 12 years, putting together design projects that have won him recognition from all corners of the globe. While he professes to be a little tired of the place, we soon find his passion for design, music, art and film shows no sign of diminishing. Jackson pushes his MacBook to one side, sits down and brings us up to speed on his approach to design...

CA: How do you manage to balance your design, music and moving image work at the moment?

TJ: My business is me – I don’t have anyone working for me. I sometimes get people in to help me out, but pretty much I run solo with everything and so my output isn’t necessarily huge. I decided a long time ago I would rather do three or four really strong, big projects every year than 20 projects that don’t really satisfy me. For the past couple of years the balance has been quite equal between doing lots of music and doing design work.

CA: You work across both music and design simultaneously. How much do the two influence each other?

TJ: My life has always been about music and visuals, so they coexist together. If I’m working on a record sleeve, I have to listen to the music – it’s weird; I know some people don’t, but I’m always directly inspired by the music to do the visuals. It’s tough because I’m a music maker as well. When you make music, the way you listen to music can become quite different because you end up analysing things.

CA: Is it hard to switch off?

TJ: I never switch off. My work is my life; it’s 24/7. I’m sure for most passionate designers or creative people it’s the same thing. I don’t have a separate life – my life is my work.

CA: Do you ever get a creative block, and what do you do to bust through it?

TJ: Yeah, I get creative blocks all the time. To bust through I go on holiday. I’ve discovered that the best thing is to get away from everything. I’ve been designing pretty solidly by myself for 23 or 24 years, you know.

I went to Cuba over New Year. It’s somewhere I’d always wanted to go. Because I also play music, normally most of my travelling is involved with either some kind of business work or DJing. This is the first time I’ve been away for a long time where I’ve had nothing to do. Incredible! It totally cleared my head.

CA: How did going out there inspire you?

TJ: The one thing that I’m frustrated about is that I think that I should be saying more with my work. The Cuban political posters, for instance, are one of the greatest, hugely important, powerful usages of graphic design. For me, with the fucked up shit that’s going on, the fact that not enough people are using design to do something is criminal. I’d love to. I think it’s what I should be doing.

CA: What do you think of the status quo in design right now?

TJ: I don’t give a fuck about what’s going on in graphic design. I find it boring. I find it incredibly boring. If you were to ask me what inspires me at the moment, I wouldn’t name any graphic designers whatsoever. There has always been very few people who are willing to break the mould and do something that’s different – people always want to be sheep, and when there’s sudden movement then everyone wants to follow the same movement.

The way it is with software and computers, it’s very easy to make something that looks good, but I’m not interested in things that just look good. They’ve got to have far more depth than that, and they’ve got to have a purpose, whether that’s an intellectual purpose or an emotional purpose.

CA: In your own work, do you aim for an emotional or an intellectual connection with the viewer?

TJ: My approach is far more emotional, without a doubt, although I truthfully don’t try to intellectualise about things too much because I love things that have a kind of naivety and a sense of purity to them. If you try to analyse things too much, the magic gets destroyed.

CA: How would you say your approach has changed?

TJ: My earlier work was definitely more fun, and then I made a conscious decision to become more refined. I’ve tried to have a more minimalist approach. It’s almost like a calmer for me. It calms my head. I’ve got like 20,000 records in [my studio] and thousands of books, and sometimes it’s too much. To be able to approach things in a really simple way is quite meditative, you know. It actually calms me and makes me feel better. At the moment there’s too much visual noise around – I’m not interested in these people who do work that is a barrage of stuff.

CA: So what is design about for you at the moment?

TJ: The most important things to me are to: a) solve the brief, b) satisfy myself, and c) try and push things as much as I can. I don’t have a design ego. For me it’s not about imprinting my own visual identity on everything. I’ve always had a bit of scorn for designers who have an in-house style because I just find that’s quite derogatory to your client. It’s been to my detriment in many ways because I look at my work, and I approach each client, in a totally different way, and I don’t think there’s a consistent style to my work.

CA: How do you feel about the industry in light of The Designers Republic closure?

TJ: I started out at the same time as The Designers Republic... I think it’s sad. This is not related to Designers Republic at all, but a huge percentage of the doom and gloom is based around people being too greedy and running before they can walk, or whatever. I’m sure there will be loads of doom and gloom but for me, personally, I went through the recession of the ‘80s, and it was good for me. Normally when there’s a recession it creates a movement, and if we can have a new cultural movement or youth movement and it means something can come out of this, it will be amazing.

CA: With the vinyl LP now a rarity and CD sales in decline, what opportunities are there in design for the music industry?

TJ: [Moving] from designing record sleeves to designing CDs, obviously there was a frustration. But then, as a designer, if someone asked me to design an MP3 stick, I’d have fun doing it. I’d find a solution to try and make it as exciting as possible. Bands are still going to need visual elements to promote themselves. I think the live arena is huge. Look at the amount of interactive stuff that’s going on for live music; look at that Nine Inch Nails tour – it’s some of the most incredible live visuals I’ve ever seen.

CA: How does it feel to be a design icon?

TJ: I don’t deserve the title, to be quite honest with you. I’ve only achieved two or three pieces of work that I’m really proud of. It’s very flattering, incredibly flattering.

CD Spines

From: A Personal Miscellany
Date: 12/10/06

The Milkman’s description of his preference for browsing CDs rather than iTunes if he was unsure what to listen to (see my post about iTunes 7) prompted me to finish this post about CD spines that’s been sitting round in my drafts folder for ages…

The migration of music from vinyl to compact disc was widely decried for the diminution of the canvas available to the designer. However, with the advent of the widely-loathed jewel-case, came a slight increase in width of the spine over the average single disc vinyl album (the rarer gatefold was closer in acreage to the CD – I wonder how many new gatefold sleeves are released nowadays?) To my knowledge it’s the admirable Soul Jazz label that has best exploited this space.

Ignoring the multi-CD boxes (Intro designed Stereolab, blank whiteness of the Kontakt Der Junglinge and the 3CD Trojans), when scanning the shelves for inspiration, it’s difficult to ignore anything on Soul Jazz because of their engagingly bold design ethos: bright, often two-colour images and sharp-edged vector graphics, helped in no little part by the label’s adoption of cardboard outer sleeves for their jewel cases and digipaks.

I wonder how useful coverflow in iTunes 7 will prove to be for browsing. Time will tell I guess, but it should offer a significant improvement as long as people can be bothered to add the covers that aren’t supplied automatically.
About this entry

You’re currently reading “CD spines,” an entry on A Personal Miscellany




Category:
design, music, music interfaces

7 Comments
Jump to comment form | comments rss [?] | trackback uri [?]

1. Gutta 13.10.06 / 11am

haha that Kraftwerk jpg was like looking at part of my own collection! I’ve gone right off itunes and virtual music collections. i’m sure its a way of life for some ppl, but it ain’t for me…
2. themilkman 13.10.06 / 1pm

I must say that if the coverflow thing amused me about 5 minutes (especially when I imported the covers I created for a couple of compilations), I don’t use the music library enough for it to be of much use to me. Plus, it considerably slows down my rheumatising Mac.

Although mixed CD spines can rapidly become a blur if you have more than 20 CDs, I find it makes spotting a particular CD a lot easier than spotting a particular vinyl (even gatefold). I find I have a mental image of a particular spine I am looking for if I am looking for something specific, and I also roughly know on which shlef I am likely to to find it, so it all helps.

I especially like the treatment applied by The Designers Republic on some Warp releases especially to have small text on two lines, as they did recently for AFX’s Hangable Auto Bulb, but I find I like the use of small text anyway usually… wherever. Even my hand writing is quite tiny!
3. Peter Skwiot Smith 13.10.06 / 4pm

It’s funny you should post this on your site, as I recently made a similar post on mine concerning digital versus physical music. Last week I sold my iPod, in an effort to reclaim my physical music collection and actually start using it. I am not opposed to digital music (Napster and SoulSeek introduced me to more music than I still know what to do with), nor do I condemn it and wish it go away.

The physical packaging to me is important (especially as graphic designer) and I refuse (99% of the time) to purchase digital music (as I am paying a similar price to a CD and receiving an inferior product), so why bother having an iPod?

I have been using straight CDs for the last two weeks, and have rediscovered much of my collection again, simply because so much was passed over in iTunes and on my iPod. This might start happening with CDs only, but at least I am using the object I am spending my money on.

Cheers on the post.
4. 11V 18.10.06 / 8pm

Good to hear from you Gutta, hope you’re doing very well.
Milkman – my particular focus on this post was spins that stand out, but I know what you mean about small text – Rune Grammofon being a distinct point in that regard – it’s like almost not having text when it’s that small and standardised.
Peter – funny that this is the point at which CDs are virtually old school… Like you, I’ve returned to playing CDs recently when at home.
5. themilkman 27.10.06 / 5pm

I realised your post was about spines that stand out, and I was kinda making the same point starting from a completely different angle. It always fascinates me to see how people react so differently to the same thing, but I suppose this is what makes life in general so interesting.

Peter, I thought your post was very interesting, and I am glad that there seem to be more people around who enjoy the physical aspect of music than I at some point thought. I wouldn’t go as far as selling my MP3 player though as I certainly enjoy the practicality of having 20Gb (in my case) of music wherever I go, which means that I will most probably be able to find something to suit my mood whatever it is if I get stuck on a train or am away from home for a few days. In that respect, I actually prefer carrying one MP3 player than a portable CD player and loads of CDs in my bag, It spares my back for a start!

At home though, it is very rare that I listen to MP3s. I occasionally use Soulseek, mostly to download something that I am interested in but have never heard before, and more often than not, I end up buying the album on CD once I’ve come to the conclusion that I like what I’ve downloaded. If not, it usually end up being pushed into oblivion, sometimes quite roughly, via my trash folder.
6. Justin 20.12.06 / 9am

what a great post, it echoes my sentiments exactly, I’ve spent the past couple of months slowly backing up my CD collection to two 400GB external drives in FLAC… I thought the convenience of having everything in one place would revolutionise how I listened to music – instead I found the experience of browsing through the folders soulless and uninspiring.

Nothing beats browsing shelves of physical objects, carrying them over to the hifi and kicking back on the sofa to listen properly.

As an aside, with the lifespan of harddrives taken into account, CDs are actually still one of the best ways to store digital data for the long term.
7. 11V 19.02.07 / 5pm

Hello Justin, I usually receive an email notification of new comments, but this one never arrived hence the lateness of my response. I think I’d be more interested in the digital backup if I could store the drives remotely – one of my occasional fears is the idea of losing my music collection through fire, flood or similar. As with my laptop backup being onsite, if I get robbed I’ve lost the lot. This is a slightly tricky problem to solve.

Mark Ronson - Bang Bang Bang by Big Active

Big Active has completed a huge amount of high profile record sleeves - from Beck to Muse via Basement Jaxx, Goldfrapp, Foals, Snow Patrol and The Enemy. [Their White Lies packaging is also particularly worth noting.]

The recent design for Mark Ronson's 'Bang Bang Bang' appears to be a celebration of record collecting [it's actually taken from upcoming album, 'Record Collection'] and features what appears to be a collage of different sleeves. But all of the artwork is original and each element highlights an individual aspect of the track itself: seperately featuring Ronson plus featured vocalists Q-Tip and Mndr. But - also in tandem with the music - it also references aspects of the 1980s. [The artwork for the next single - 'Bike Song' which is out in September - has also been added.]

While it is interesting that it almost has this trompe l'oeil effect for the vinyl product, as online artwork it becomes even more curious.

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl

Great reference spotted by Dave. (Cheers!)

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl features work by 41 artists from around the world, from the 1960s to the present, who use vinyl records as subject or medium. The exhibition includes sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance.

Artists in the exhibition include Laurie Anderson (1947 USA), Felipe Barbosa (1978 Brazil), David Byrne (1952 Scotland), Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller (1957 & 1960 Canada)*, William Cordova (1971 Peru), Moyra Davey (1958 Canada), Kevin Ei-ichi deForest (1962 Canada), Jeroen Diepenmaat (1978 Netherlands), Sean Duffy (1966 USA), Yukio Fujimoto (1950 Japan), Jack Goldstein (1945 Canada), Rodney Graham (1949 Canada)*, Harrison Haynes (1973 USA)*, Gregor Hildebrandt (1974 Germany), Satch Hoyt (1957 UK), Jasper Johns (1930 USA), Taiyo Kimura (1970 Japan), Tim Lee (1975 Korea), Ralph Lemon (1952 USA), Christian Marclay (1955 USA), David McConnell (1975 USA), Mingering Mike (1950 USA), Dave Muller (1964 USA), Ujino Muneteru (1964 Japan), Vik Muniz and Carlos da Silva Assunção Filho aka Cafi (1961 & 1950 Brazil)*, Patrick Douthit aka 9th Wonder (1975 USA)*, DJ Rekha (1971 UK)*, Robin Rhode (1976 South Africa), Dario Robleto (1972 USA), Ed Ruscha (1937 USA), Malick Sidibé (1935 Mali), Xaviera Simmons (1974 USA), Mark Soo (1977 Singapore), Meredyth Sparks (1972 USA), Su-Mei Tse (1973 Luxembourg), Fatimah Tuggar (1967 Nigeria), Alice Wagner (1974 Peru), Carrie Mae Weems (1953 USA), and Lyota Yagi (1980 Japan).

The accompanying Cover to Cover installation features 10 artists and musicians who each curated a crate of 20 albums that tell a story through the cover visuals. Visitors will peruse the crates and with headphones listen to records on record players.

Non-Format Interview

From: Creative Review
Date: 01/05/07

For me, this is a great (if not that recent) Q&A with Non-Format. Not just because I like a lot of the work they produce, but they discuss the changing nature of album artwork from packaging to something else. Embracing the future.

With their new book, Love Song, about to be published, we asked our CRBlog readers to send in their questions for design studio Non-Format. From the benefits inherent in doing work for free; to designing together side-by-side; via questions on their music (and pizza) tastes, we probed Jon and Kjell on behalf of some of their biggest fans...

From James White:
Labels like Lo have shown that they’re in full support of beautiful and effective design. Are these sorts of labels in a decline and does the digital revolution bring with it a fear that one day record sleeves might no longer exist?
Jon Forss: The second part of the question is the easiest to answer – yes, obviously the digital revolution will completely eradicate the need for record sleeves eventually; for printed carboard sleeves or jewel cases.
Kjell Ekhorn: Hopefully anyway!
JF: Yes, let’s hope so!
KE: Maybe the download will become much more expressive than they are now? You would get video with it or some visual material I’m sure. It would be a platform for designers again.
JF: It would mean a lot less work if you’re just doing print-based music packaging but I’d hope we’re broad-minded enough to see the potential in other formats.
KE: Yes, it’s like anything that moves on. There was that whole thing about LPs dying and CDs being too small…
JF: The “we can’t express ourselves on a small scale” idea. And then people come along like Mark Farrow to show that CD packaging can be an amazing piece of expression. Music doesn’t need packaging, as such, but I think it’s good that it has some kind of visual element.
KE: It needs some kind of visual culture to back it up. Music packaging is never repackaged; books are repackaged over and over again but with music – even if the cover is bad – it’s still an integral part of a release.

From Jordan Viray:
Being that your portfolio is filled with music packaging, how much of a role does music play in your design process?
JF: Although we haven’t got any on right now but we do play music all the time. We like to listen to what we’re designing for, too, as much as we can. It’s a funny process – when we design music packaging we don’t listen to the music so that we’ll therefore know exactly what kind of packaging it will be. It just comes out of listening to it, getting a mood and a feel for it.
KE: It definitely informs the way it’s going to a certain extent. But sometimes it stops ideas too. You can have a preconceived idea and then put on the CD and you change your mind.

From Robert Klanten, publisher, Die Gestalten Verlag:
I’d like to know how you work together as a design duo on a daily basis. Is there a culture of discussion and debate or a miraculous, mutual, wordless understanding like an old married couple might have?
JF: I’d say there is a certain spoken understanding between us. But in practice, we start every project by discussing everything about it together. Whoever’s least busy starts on a project straight away.
KE: Because we sit like we do, with the monitors towards each other, it’s very open – you might sketch on something and the other one will say “that’s looks really good, can I have a copy of the file?” It’s a continuous dialogue really.

From Tony Herrington, editor in chief and publisher of The Wire:
Bowie or Roxy?
JF: That’s easy for me. Bowie. No, actually, Roxy. No it’s Bowie.
KE: Bowie for me.
JF: OK, I’ll say Roxy so we have an even spread.
Someone once said about you, “They are secretive, stubborn, arrogant [but also] dazzlingly creative, technically brilliant, cool and pragmatic and 100 per cent reliable.” Discuss.
JF: It’s all true.
KE: Apart from the latter part – that’s not for us to judge. But we can easily say we’re secretive, in not wanting to show off our “pre-work” work. As an assessment from a client, though, I agree with the statement. And the arrogance comes from that, I guess – just being passionate about something. When you have to fight for something. When clients say “I don’t like it” you have to say “well you don’t know, you should listen to us.”

From Adrian Shaughnessy, This is Real Art:
I’m intrigued by the way you sit side by side, but with your screens facing inwards so that each can see what the other is doing. Lots of designers hate showing there developmental work, do you recommend this as a good way to work?
KE: It is a matter of trust – when you work with another designer on that level it’s much more like how advertising teams work where you actually share everything. You can be working on something and be completely stuck but then the other person can see the possibilities. But if you do that with a designer who you’re not in tune with, it obviously doesn’t work at all. When we’re sharing work we know that it doesn’t go any further than between us – it’s our work moving towars something better. We wouldn’t like to show other people our development work but between us we know that it’s a stepping stone. It’s difficult to find a relationship like that, to find somebody who you are compatible with. So I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but if you find someone like that then it’s a great way of working.
JF: Being able to glance over a screen is part of the magic of it – so we’ll have to ensure that when we’re passing files over in future that they’re in a raw state, not too polished.
KE: It’s that kind of trust where you know you won’t be laughed at, if what you’ve done is crap.
Also, as a frequent visitor to your studio, I am never offered a cup of tea? Can you say why this is?
JF: Because the kettle lead doesn’t reach the socket. It’s actually wired in to part of the building and we can’t move it. That’s the truth!

From Mark Blamire, Blanka/Neue:
You both have an incredible love of music and this comes across in the way that you handle the design of the music packaging projects. Which artist would Non-Format get a real kick out of working with, if you had the choice of repackaging anyone?
JF: Going back in time? It’s difficult – I wouldn’t want to meddle with history if it was redoing the Blue Monday sleeve, I wouldn’t want to mess with that and the space-time continuum…
KE: But someone like Tom Waits – I think his musical output has been far better than any of his sleeve artwork.
JF: People like Talking Heads always hooked up with great visual people whereas Waits didn’t seem to do that.
KE: There are some covers that are better than others, but the general feel of it is that they’re very traditional. So he would have been nice to package througout his career. Other than that, we’d like to work with someone like the next Bjork; people who indulge in great visuals.

From Simon Zirkunow:
A lot of your work is based on visually stunning and yet very expensive production techniques. How do you persuade your clients that it’s worth it?
JF: It’s about trust. Some of our record lable clients we’ve had for years and it’s taken time – with a new record company there’s no way they’re going to go with something with high production values. They have their own set up with printers they’re used to, working on digi-pack or jewel case. For example, we’ve spent years working with Lo Recordings and for the Red Snapper job, we just found out what the budget was for the job and that was the key to it. We could then allocate it in a different way. It wasn’t actually that expensive either.
KE: It was work-intensive for us in terms of finding the people. We put in a lot more effort – you have to take control.
How did you leave the typical design ground behind, ultimately leading to the unique work you are doing now?
KE: We’ve been willing to indulge ourselves in stuff that hasn’t paid. Over the seven years we’ve been working together there have been times where we’ve not taken a salary. Basically, we’ve tried to go for what we’ve wanted to produce – we haven’t really had a great business plan!
JF: Sometimes I wish we had rich uncles who could fund us. But we indulge ourselves with our passion to design things and then the money is secondary, which isn’t very good.
KE: It’s satisfactory as a way of working – but the two don’t go hand in hand. It’s proven truth that sometimes you do little projects that you get hardly anything for and that project leads to something that actually will pay. That’s more the way that we like to think about it.
How long does it take you to develop one of your custom typefaces?
JF: It depends on the typeface. Sometimes we work quite quickly and they’re exactly what we want for the job. Others need more work.
KE: Some won’t be the whole alphabet either, just the letters that you need. Then later you might go back to them.
JF: It might look great for the letters you need but might not for the rest of the alphabet. We had that with the Wire – we hoped and prayed that they wouldn’t write a headline with a Z in it! We didn’t have one.
Also, what is the most rewarding experience for you after you finished a piece?
JF: Having the work come in looking exactly right: it’s printed well – exactly as you wanted it. Then seeing it in the store, that next stage on.
KE: Seeing it function as what it was meant to be. And that goes the same for the disappointment side of things too. You can be very involved in something and then when the final product comes in and it’s not printed well… it’s as disappointing as something else can be rewarding.
JF: Another really important thing for us both is the Andy Warhol factor – producing hundreds or thousands of something and then seeing lots of them in the same space is enormously satisfying. That mass-production – I never get over that.

From Akrok:
How do you guys deal with clients that want tons of stuff in a very short time? Do you raise the price? Or try to squeeze it in the schedule? Or just tell them you need more time?
JF: All three. It depends on the project. Some projects aren’t that attractive, there isn’t much money and there’s no time. There’s that thing that “you can have it done well, you can have it done quickly, you can have it done cheaply – pick two”. We don’t quite adhere to that – we end up doing it all quickly, well and for no money!

From stupidapp:
How do you rationalize and explain (to yourselves and to clients) the imagery that you create for works like Black Devil Disco Club or The Chap EPs?
KE: Seeing something and liking it. And seeing it and liking it while you’re listening to the music.
JF: Yes, in terms of rationalising it – we just like it. And we try and convey that to the client.
KE: We get a belief in something that we think is good. There was one time, however, when a recording artist started crying when he saw the designs we had done – because we had used a dog on the cover and he had a phobia of dogs. It was the most peculiar presentation ever. It was so strange to have a design that was really good and was rejected because of this – he broke down crying! He was keen on our work – but couldn’t stand the thought of having a dog on the sleeve.
JF: Those sleeves mentioned in the questions are also both on Lo Recordings so we’ve built up a relationship with them – it’s rare that they question our judgement now.

From Thor:
Nice work but why do you show yourselves with cut-off-heads?
KE: They were originally done for Creative Review as a portrait.
JF: I guess it comes from vanity – we don’t particularly like being photographed so we created silhouettes and overlapped them so there was a sense of us unified. Cutting them off resolved what to do with the neck but we liked the reference to when they used to put heads on spikes at the edge of the city as an example to others. I think there’s something in that connotation.

From WOWBROW:
What’s your favourite pizza topping?
KE: I think I’d have to go for parmesan and rocket.
JF: Pepperoni for me every time – you can pretty much put anything you like with it. As long as it’s not pineapple.

Threnody for physical media

From: http://www.eleventhvolume.com/
Date: 22/02/07

"In the year 2024, when the arc lights of helicopter gunships sweep the streets in the search for stray members of the vinyl underclass and possession of shiny, silvered circles once known as compact discs, is a crime punishable by death, the memory of objects such as the one pictured below will be dim, but hopefully fond…"