'VERBAL ACROBATICS' Final Submission Boards

OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

Title:

78RPM - MP3

Brief:

Investigate the lyricism of at least two 90’s hip-hop songs of different artists.

Translate the lyricism, emotion and songwriting of the songs to typographic form.

Background:

Investigate 90’s hip hop movement, culture and visual style. Special consideration to record sleeves, album covers and videos.

Target audience:

Hip-hop fans. Most likely male. Born in the 80’s and grew up with 90’s hip-hop or younger and want to learn more.

Original brief

Brief:

The rewritten brief to explore more opportunities and range - based off the ‘78rpm’ brief from ISTD student briefs of 2009.

This is the much shorter and summarised version.

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

Record stores

Karaoke

Party atmosphere

Tone of voice & emotion

Concept:

The concept that jumped out from me right off the bat was to target hip-hop and somehow extend the brief into a range of products, something distributable in the real world.

I really wanted to extend the emotion , vibe and tone of voice of each song and rapper.

Really make it jump out to you, hearing it playing in your ears without any music, especially if you’re familiar with the song.

Karaoke was a huge inspiration too, the way you sing along and focus on a sentence at a time. Nod your head.

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

Documentaries

Listen to the stuff

Existing Hip-Hop typography

90s album covers art

Research:

Research for this project was a lot of fun, I’m a huge hip-hop fan already but I realised I was still a complete beginner when it came to so much of the culture.

Record store visits to stores such as Jumbo Records to research the relationship between graphic design and music in the form of posters.

Any excuseto listen to the stuff! Hip hop documentaries such as ‘The Art of Rap’ were really helpful in analysing the lyrics.

Existing music typography too. What struck me was how little emotion or resemblance they had to the song in question.

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

Contents: 3 x Vinyl records 3 x Typographic posters (420 x 594mm)

Ba

Boxset:

The most logical solution for me and most exciting was to create a vinyl record boxset, samplying old vinyls to reinvent them for new material is one of the core fundamentals of hip-hop’s birth.

In a lot of record stores, you can listen to a record before buying it, a poster of the

ck

song in question would be just what was needed to visualise and feel the song.

The name “Verbal Acrobatics’ is a comment on the free-flowing and ‘bounciness’ of rap lyricism and raw emotion I wanted to convey.

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

Contents:

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

3 typographic posters of the selected artists will slide out. Along with the records of the posters.

3 typographic posters of the selected artists will slide out. Along with the records of the posters.

The idea is the audience would pop on the record and enjoy the poster and rap along while listening to the song.

The idea is the audience would pop on the record and enjoy the poster and rap along while listening to the song.

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

Posters:

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

The visuals for each poster are heavily influenced by the respective artists’ album art for the song in question and general consistent visual style throughout their careers. All hand drawn as a challenge to myself and to add more emotion and looseness to the posters, reflecting the rap lyrics.

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

Posters x Artists: A Tribe Called Quest: Can I Kick It? (1990) Wu-Tang Clan - Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ (1993) Nas - It Ain’t Hard To Tell (1994) 7

OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

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OUGD504: Design For Print & Web

ISTD: 78RPM: Verbal Acrobatics!

Abbas Mushtaq _ Level 05

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