A-Z OF GRAPHIC LANGUAGE Dominique Marshall
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Contents
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VCT What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
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Angel With The Scabbed Wings
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Blurry
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Chapter Four
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Dismantle Me
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Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence
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Frail Words Collapse
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Given Up *typography animation*
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Head Automatica Soundsystem
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It Beats For You
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Just So You Know *typography animation*
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Kill The Music
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Listening
Project Mayhem
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Queen of You
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Razor
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Spade
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Taste of Ink
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Ugly In The Morning
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Vanity and Greed
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We All Turn Back To Dust
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X
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Young and The Hopeless
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Zzzonked
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PPD Workshops
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Marvelous Slut
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Initial Concepts and Ideas
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New Black
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Final Idea Development
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Of Wolf and Man
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Conclusion
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What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
“An album cover is the initial moment of the record. It’s a doorway into the music.” Peter Blake
Within the music industry, sleeve design has generally always played a dominant part in visually expressing a band’s identity and their current style of music. Along with live gigs, the internet, festivals, clubs etc, many musicians across the globe still see sleeve design as one of the many platforms they can utilize in order to advertise themselves to a large audience. However with programmes like iTunes and Spotify running the field in a new generation being able to download music, many people have stopped buying physical copies of albums and have instead opted into a world of digital downloads, sometimes only resorting to buying single songs instead of full albums like what they would get from record shops.
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iTunes and Spotify still give this new downloading generation the option to purchase digital versions of album booklets which have print quality pages and additional material, however these versions do not have the same value as those which are printed, and they tend to be lost within the mix of text based screen interfaces. As stated by graphic designer Adrian Shaughnessy, “the record cover is increasingly likely to be viewed as an irrelevancy,”1 but despite this view, bands and musicians still look to have a solid piece of artwork for their albums so they can still have a visual presence both online and in printed forms.
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What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
“ When we do encounter meaningful cover art it’s usually because of strong-minded musicians demanding a visual corollary to their music.” 3 Adrian Shaughnessy
When it comes to album artwork, bands and artists within different genres of music use a variety of design trends to help give them a creative voice amongst the crowd. The creative online blog Designbump wrote extensively about the design trends that dominated in 2009, showing that album art is still viewed as an essential part of the music industry. This article can be viewed here: Album Artwork - 2009’s Greatest Design Trends2
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Some of the more dominant trends in my view included on the list are Portraits, Grunge, Photo Manipulations, TypeBased and Minimalistic. With these trends, and with others too, designers have a variety of methods that they can use in order to create album artwork, whether it be to visualize the style of the music or the name of the album, to simply show a photograph of the artist or band, or whether it be to create an abstract or surreal design is connected to either the music or the name, but not in such a straightforward manner.
Sometimes the more thought provoking album artwork designs are the ones where designers have linked the artwork to the musical style of the album recorded, or they have linked it to the title given. Both of these methods produce artwork that is visually appealing with some kind of meaning being emphasized, and gets audiences worldwide questioning the designers’ choices as to why they chose to use the particular visuals shown.
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What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
Beastie Boys - To The 5 Boroughs
Cover Design by Matteo Pericoli and Nathanial Hornblower
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Hailing from New York City, the hip hop group Beastie Boys’ sixth studio album To The 5 Boroughs was released in 2004, recorded as a tribute to their hometown after the September 11th terrorist attacks and also as a criticism to George W. Bush’s former time as President.
The whole drawing by Matteo Pericoli is originally 12x444 inches, and was used for the CD digi pack, the vinyl version of the album and also on merchandise related to the album. The whole piece can be viewed here > Manhattan Unfurled5.
The artwork used for the cover and inside booklet depicts the Manhattan skyline as an intricate pen and ink drawing, with the West Coast drawn on one side of the booklet and the East Coast drawn on the opposite side. As the artwork was completed in 20004, the Twin Towers are still standing to the right of the image. I think the design is a lot more symbolic and meaningful this way, as it helps to serve as one of many visual reminders about what the city was like before such a tragic event took place.
The minimalistic approach to this design is one that makes it very effective in conveying the subject matter, as New York is always recognizable by the skyscrapers that fill the city skyline. With the only use of colour being kept to the group name, the detailing of the drawing is even more evident amongst the white space. In my view this artwork would not work as well if the buildings were to be coloured like the typography, as it would just look too busy and not pleasant to look at.
With all of the political activism that was going on in New York and around the world at the time of the album release, To The Boroughs was one of the many creative outputs conducted by the Beastie Boys that got their voices heard about the city they grew up in and are majorly influenced by. The link between the art and the title “To The 5 Boroughs” makes you feel like the album will be taking you on a journey through this major city from the group’s point of view. With the song information written around the rest of the drawing inside the CD booklet, one could see this type of design as a mini story book, which serves to be a quite a dominant format within the hip hop genre.
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What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
Head Automatica - Decadence
Cover Design by Jane Morledge, photography by Xevi Muntane
Head Automaticaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s debut sound of electronic rock/power pop is solidified in this album cover, with the use of bright colours, blurry shapes and repetition emphasizing the luxurious self-indulgent lifestyle that the album title suggests. With the focal point being the female model in the centre of the page, the eye begins to travel around and notice the signs that highlight a seedy partyesque lifestyle. With the model wearing all white, it makes the colours around her bounce more off the page, giving them more of an illuminating look. This strange mix of blurry fluorescent colours gives viewers the illusion that they may be intoxicated whilst walking through city streets that are beaming with neon lights, like the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Girls Girls Girlsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sign, urging them to part ways with whatever money they may have. 10
This can be viewed as very clever advertising for the album, as music buyers would be tempted to buy the album in the same way that people are tempted to spend money at seedy bars. The band name and album title both stem from the top left corner to the bottom in a diagonal line. This differs from the norm of the typography being placed either at the top or at the bottom of a cover, and it also helps to place more focus on the imagery, which dominates the cover nonetheless. The typography has been written in quite an elegant way, as the band name has been written in numbers that have been manipulated to look like letters, and the album title is written to look like a flashing LCD screen.
The typography has been written in quite an elegant way, as the band name has been written in numbers that have been manipulated to look like letters, and the album title is written to look like a flashing LCD screen. I think the design decisions made to create this album cover are very effective in conveying the title of the album and the style of the music in one. Trying to find new ways of portraying such an eccentric style of music could be deemed quite challenging, but i think Morledge has managed this and created a design that is loved and adored across the globe.
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What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
Eric B & Rakim - Paid In Full
Art Direction by Ruth Kaplan; Photography by Ron Contarsy
Cd covers created within the hip hop culture of the 1980’s all had the basic starting point of being made with the ‘four cornerstones of hip hop culture’ in mind, these being Rapping, Deejaying, Breakdance and Graffiti.6 The visual language of hip hop sleeves has and always will be very identifiable, as the artwork was always focused on these cornerstones, as well as other elements that went alongside them. Having a very simple yet effective message, this sleeve created for hip hop acts Eric B and Rakim’s Paid In Full album is an example of how easy it is to distinguish a hip hop cover from others. In this cover, the main image is one that sums up the hip hip culture and ‘blatant arrogance’ and obsessions of
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the musicians within it, these being ‘gold, money, personalized jewellery, and custom-made suits’.7 The typography used for the album name is kept to a bare minimum, looking more like a copyright sign. Their names are just visible in the top right hand corner also, as they have been overlaid on top of the bright green and white money background. This in turn makes the viewer focus on the artists. Despite not being designed to the best it could be, this album cover still manages to work in the sense that the image relates directly to the title used. The iconic status of these two musicians is portrayed directly as their photograph dominants the majority of the page.
The viewer’s eye is drawn directly to the centre of the cover, with not much fighting for against it for attention. The title emphasizes this by acting as an explanatory device, indicating that they have indeed been “paid in full’, which has enabled them to purchase the goods they hold within the image. The layout of this cover is very effective in emphasizing the message, and I think that if the typography used was in fact bigger than it is, it possibly would not have the same effect as it does on the smaller scale used. The use of a very simple colour scheme is another thing that makes this cover so effective, as again it highlights the nature of the album title being focused on money.
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What Decisions Have Designers Made When Visually Interpreting Album Titles?
Bibliography 1, 3 - Cover Art By: New Music Graphics, Adrian Shaughnessy, 2008 2 - http://designbump.com/originals/album-artwork-2009s-greatestdesign-trends 4 - http://sleevage.com/beastie-boys-to-the-5-boroughs/ 5 - http://www.matteopericoli.com/special.html# 6, 7 - The Book of Hip Hop Cover Art, Andrew Emery, 2004 http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:fpfwxqy5ldfe~T2
Linking the visual design to the album title was the best approach for these three album covers, as they all show this connection in a visually stimulating way that helps them to be recognized by music lovers, critics and other designers worldwide. I think that if these covers had artwork that was not related to the album name, they would not be as effective as they are now.
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The process of interpreting an album/ song name into a visual piece of artwork is what will frame and inform the ideology behind my A-Z of Graphic Language spreads. Keeping in mind the most popular design trends and what has made them so popular, I will use a similar stance when considering what my artwork will include and how it will communicate the name it is based on.
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PDF Development
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PDF Development
Workshops When I initially signed up to the workshops for the A-Z of Graphic Language project, all of the practical lessons were to be typography or layout based. As these were the design elements that I enjoyed the most and wished to improve on, the workshops I chose seemed to be the perfect choice. The workshops I chose were: • The Language of Colour • Letterspacing and Kerning • The Good, The Bad and The Ugly • Display Typography • Type As Image • Vernacular Type • Contemporary Debates • Setting Text • How To Make A Publication Look Good • Using Visual Metaphors • Read Slow or Read Fast • Choosing A Typeface • Subvertising • How To Think Conceptually About Your PDF
Language of Colour This workshop was useful in making me more aware of different colour palettes that exist outside of what I tend to always use, or what I may already be aware of & just haven’t used yet. In the group I was working with, our key message pair was Luxury & Value. The more interesting colour palette we created was the one for Luxury, and after making these colour blocks into usable colour swatches in Illustrator, I then created various logo experiments.
The VCT seminars that I was able to attend were: • Methodology/Interpretation • Experimental Typography • Word Games • Deconstruction/Reconstruction • Narrative Structures I also felt that these were to be the most important aspects that I would need to think about when producing my A-Z spreads and the rest of my PDF.
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Letterspacing/Kerning
First typography based workshop I did. Experimented with the tracking and kerning functions in InDesign using my name as the type. This workshop introduced me to the beginnings of typography fundamentals that I would need to be aware of as a growing designer, and also whilst producing my PDF.
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PDF Development
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Looking into what good and bad typography decisions exist within the design world. Bad typography choices that were discussed included:
Display Typography Experimenting with and learning more about the typography features used in InDesign in order to create a simple typographic display poster based on a quote of our choice.
• Choice of type • Colour • Pixelation • Overused type • Bad letterspacing • Different weights • Varied justification • No consistency • Bad contrast • Bad leading Good typography was viewed as: • Clear • Decorative • Visually appealing • Aligned • Having good letterspacing • Experimental • Hand-drawn • Consistent • Having clear hierarchy • Written in consistent weights • Textured
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Type As Image This was the first proper experimental workshop, as we were given the task to visualise a word in an abstract way, mixing type and shapes together depending on our chosen word.
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PDF Development
Vernacular Type Typeface produced inspired by the work of Ed Fella and Mike Perry. I didn’t particularly like the typeface I created during the workshop, hence the sudden stop at the letter N.
Using the book “Vans Off The Wall; Stories of Sole From Vans Originals”, I set about creating a vernacular typeface that I liked. I created three initial versions that I considered using in my PDF: • Type with no counters • Type with counters • a computer generated version
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Setting Text Based on skills learned in the first few typography workshops, Setting Text focused more on how to make long passages of type look appealing to read.
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How To Make A Publication Look Good Looking at how existing publications have been created to be visually interesting and captivating so as to keep its readers engaged throughout.
I chose to analyse my Vans Off The Wall book during this workshop, as the layout was very intriguing and consistent.
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How To Think Conceptually About Your PDF Considering the workshops I had already attended, How To Think Conceptually brought all of my work together collectively, and helped me to consolidate what I had learnt during the rest of the workshops, and what my main focuses were going to be for my A-Z.
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Initial Concepts/Ideas When I first started thinking about what I wanted my A-Z to be based on, my main idea was to create an A-Z of terms that graphic designers use, things they do whilst practicing design, and also designers/illustrators that have a definite style.
I found this to be a good starting point for my spreads, as it would give me the opportunity to learn more about design techniques and skills that I would be using more as my design career progressed. It would also have given me the chance to show the work of a few illustrators that have influenced my past design work.
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Whilst producing these layout thumbnails, I began to realise that my idea of visualising graphic terms could end up being quite generic and unoriginal, although it would be communicating a direct type of graphic language.
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PDF Development
After attending several group tutorials, I subsequently realized that creating a PDF about graphic terms was not the route I wanted to take, but instead I wanted to focus on something that I was interesting in and which reflects my ambitions and individual direction design wise.
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Quick thumbnails of how my front cover and contents could look with regards to my new A-Z concept
Being that music is my main design influence, my A-Z concept changed to me communicating album & song titles, creating artwork that would convey the name in a literal manner, rather than creating artwork that was completely abstract and not related to the name in some way. The main visual ideas I got from each tutorial were: • \Make my page layouts in the format of music graphics i.e. CD covers, vinyls, cassette tape covers, flyers, posters, magazine spreads, animated typography • Base the style of each page on the style of an artist/ designer I like, interpreting their methods into my own work (deconstructing what already exists & reconstructing it) • Use one type of “graphic language” throughout the PDF in order to keep it consistent & flowing i.e. create all the pages using illustration/collage/interactive media etc 90
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PDF Development
Final Idea Development With my final A-Z idea being based on album and song titles, I set about creating a list of those which I thought would be quite interesting to try and visualize in a literal manner. This list changed continuously as I began creating some of the letters, as I felt that the imagery was not as strong as I wished it to be.
First round of ideas for my A-Z Final A-Z ideas
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PDF Development
Sticking with interpreting album/song titles & visualizing them, I decided that my A-Z spreads of my PDF were just going to show the 26 letter designs, rather than including a small section of text describing what each piece means. This gives the viewer the chance to really engage with the designs and make up their own mind about why I chose to visualize the names in that way. As typography was going to be one of the main concepts for my A-Z, I was given the idea of making all the letter choices just song titles rather than a mix of album names & songs, that way depending on the composition - I could include the lyrics of each song within the artwork. Compositions made based on the first set of titles. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel that these were as effective as I wanted to them be, so decided not to use them in my final A-Z.
I also took a conscious decision to keep all of the letter spreads as posters rather than using the different music formats as the basis for each design (i.e. CD covers, vinyl covers, magazine spreads etc), as I felt that I was able to give myself a bit more freedom regarding the layout and composition of each piece. As I began to work through creating each letter design, I found that a large proportion of my name choices were going to include photography. In order to keep these designs consistent, I placed a restriction on myself and only used stock photography found on DeviantArt. This meant that I was able to use my time wisely and use imagery that already exists, rather than trying to take photographs myself and not have enough time to create my A-Z spreads. I think that this was a successful decision on my part, as I was able to focus more on showing my design skills in image manipulation and mix that with typography, instead of using up my time trying to take the best photograph.
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PDF Development
Baby, you got me all wrong and maybe I'm not at all down and out, I'm high and I'm in Don't you know who I am? I'm the jaded one with pop insensitivity and when I finish struggling we can make our
Baby, you got me all wrong and maybe I'm not at all down and out, I'm high and I'm in. Don't you know who I am? I'm the j ad e d o n e w it h pop insensitivity and when I finish struggling we can make our way to the dance floor a n d s t a n d l i ke strangers in an elevator stuc k between stories. I always find myself
way to the dance floor and stand like strangers in an elevator stuck between stories I always find myself in the middle of your stories with the camera as I will suffer if a witness I do is everything wrong then by
in the middle of your stories with the c amera as a witness I will suffer if everything I do is wrong then by god I'll do it
god I'll do it right we don't dance, no no no we got class no we don't have any fun at all it's the new style and we know it we're not stunning we're just stunned a n d we're lying for a living we're lying for a living
r i g ht . we d o n' t dance, no no no we got class no we don't have any fun at all it's the new style and we know it we’re not stunning we're just stunned and we're lying for a living we're lying for a living don't you know who I am? I'm the real thing with low-key sensibilities. I don't need what I got half as much
you know who I am? I’m the jaded one with pop insensitivity and when I finish struggling we can make our way to the dance floor and stand like strangers in an elevator stuck between stories I always find myself in the middle of your stories with the camera as a witness I will suffer if everything I do is wrong then by god I'll do it right we don't dance, no no no we got class no we don't have any fun at all it's the new style and we know it we're not stunning we're just stunned and we're lying for a living we're lying for a living don't you know who I am? I'm the real thing with low-key sensibilities. I don't need what I got half as much as everyone covets it well if loving me is wrong, then god damn you do it right it turns us on to turn you down, we're turned on to turn you down baby you got me all wrong and
as everyone covets it well if if everything I do is wrong then by god I'll do it right loving me is wrong, then god damn you we don't dance, no no no we got class no we don't do it right it turns us on to turn you down, have any fun at all it's the new style and we know it we're turned on to turn you down. Baby, you got we're not stunning we're just stunned and me all wrong and maybe I'm not at all down and we're lying for a living we're lying for a living don't you know out, I'm high and I'm in. Don't you know who I am? who I am? I'm the real thing with low-key sensibilities I I'm the jaded one with pop insensitivity and when I d o n ' t n e e d what I got half as much as e v e r y o n e finish struggling we can make our way to the dance covets it well if loving me is wrong, then god damn you floor and stand do it right it turns us on to turn you down, we're like strangers in an elevator stuck between stories I turned on to turn you down Baby, you got me always find myself in the middle of your all wrong and maybe I'm not at all down stories with the camera as a and out, I'm high and I'm in. Don’t witness I will suffer
maybe I'm not at all down and out I'm high and I’m in don’t you know who I am? I'm the jaded one with pop insensitivity and when I finish struggling we can make our way to the dance floor and stand like strangers in an elevator stuck between stories I always find myself in the middle of your stories with
t h e camera as a witness I will suffer if everything I do is wrong then by god I'll do it right we don't dance, no no no we got class no we don't have any fun at all it's the new style and we know it we're not stunning we're just stunned and we're lying for a living we're lying for a living don't you know who I am? I'm the real thing with low-key sensibilities. I don't need what I got half as much as everyone covets it well if loving me is wrong, then god damn you do it right it turns us on to turn you down we're turned on to turn you
down baby, you got me all wrong and maybe I'm not at all down and out I'm high and I'm in don't you know who I am? I'm the jaded one with pop insensitivity and when I finish struggling we can make our way to the dance floor and stand like strangers in an elevator stuck between stories I always find myself in the middle of your stories with the camera as a witness I will suffer if everything I do is wrong then by
god I'll do it right we don't dance, no no no we got class no we don't have any fun at all it's the new style and we know it we're not stunning we're just stunned and we're lying for a living we're lying for a living don't you know who I am? I'm the real thing with low-key sensibilities. I don't need what I got half as much as everyone covets it well if loving me is wrong, then god damn you do it right it turns us on to turn you down
My contents page is something that changed drastically once i had finished all of the A-Z spreads, as at first I wanted it to be a very visual piece, showing either sections of or the whole of my letter pages. Despite this format being more visually stimulating, I decided not to use this style and revert back to basics and just use typographic links. By doing this, it will give readers the initiative to scroll through the document in order to find out what each spread looks like, instead of being able to see them all from the get go. If I had resolved to use the image based layout, i would have made sure that each one didn’t show the whole image, but instead showed a small section of the pieces.
These are examples of some of the initial compositions I created. These were all either changed to a completely different title as they were not strong enough, or they were reworked from what is shown here to the pages shown in my final 26 spreads.
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Conclusion
Conclusion Overall, I think my PDF is quite successful in portraying the graphic language of visually communicating a song title, however I think that a few things could definitely be improved. Whilst working on my PDF, I realized that a lot of my ideas were changing constantly due to me being unhappy with the choices that I was making. This resulted in most of my original ideas not becoming a part of my final piece, even though I think most of them would be more suited than what is included now. Examples of these changes include my front cover and title pages, which I initially wanted to be more music based like in my layout thumbnails. One of the feedback points that my PDF stayed true to was the idea of using one type of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;graphic languageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; throughout, which in this case was the use of stock photography within the grunge theme. With the A-Z I think that the final designs communicate the song titles as well as they could. Some of the images were easier to come across than others, and I think that is visible in few of the designs. To improve these pages, I would consider going back to my original idea of using different music formats and modifying these designs to see how they would work in a different form. I think most of the them could work within other formats, whilst others seem to look more suited for the poster format that they are created in.
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A plus about my PDF is that I was able to view the whole document as a screen based design. This enabled me to utilize the use of hyperlinks within my text, both to websites that I may have spoken to about, or to other pages within the document itself. This came in handy especially for the contents page, as this enables the reader to click on each name and skip through the pages, instead of having to scroll through the whole document in order to see every page. If I were to produce this PDF again, I think one of the main things I would do would be to keep reverting back to any ideas I come up with at the start, and continue to stick with them, reworking them as I go along if necessary. I think this would be a better approach than going in completely new direction and not really paying attention to my other ideas, which I think is what makes my PDF not as good as I would have liked it to be.
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