Design for Listening
The future of music graphics appears to be in doubt. In the mp3 era, the phrase "I bought some music" often refers to a process in which no physical material changes hands and the visual element is at best a footnote. At the Design Observer blog, Adrian Shaughnessy recently lamented this situation in terms that will be recognizable to any music lover old enough to remember clearly a time before iTunes. Shaughnessy writes: "There is an undeniable sense of completeness when music comes with handsome packaging...Who ever had a love affair with a JPEG?"
Shaughnessy's little elegy, however, wouldn't pass muster with the techno-optimists at Wired. A new piece by Eliot Van Buskirk details how developing design technology and multimedia convergence could resurrect the romance of album art. Industry insiders are working hard on solutions such as iPod-friendly "fly-throughs" (likened by one exec to "a theme park ride through the album"). Elsewhere on the Wired website, Van Buskirk interviews Jadon Ulrich, the designer for Omaha-based indie label Saddle Creek Records.
Over at Eye Magazine, John L. Walters encourages music designers to stay vital by creating "visuals [that] forge a genuinely strong relationship with the sound."
I wonder, though, whether a whiz-bang multimedia experience could ever match the imaginative potency of an iconic album cover like, say, the Warhol-designed sleeve for the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. It's true that great album art always somehow reflects the music, but reflection implies distance. If sound and image are brought too closely together, the result might be that both become boring. The marriage between music and graphics deserves to survive the digital revolution, but not if it becomes codependent.
Ben, you've just provided me with the theme for the next AbleStock.com Design Brief on Graphics.com. Thanks!
Something to be aware of when thinking about this issue is the fact that vinyl is making a comeback. I know that most of you just thought "is she insane?" but it is true. Vinyl never left the independent record stores and labels are putting more and more titles on vinyl. To drive the point home about the "resurgence" of vinyl, consider this: the new Tower retail stores (yes the liquidator who bought their inventory decided to open some brick and mortar stores) slated for NYC, San Francisco and another town I'm blanking on right now plan to give vinyl a renewed focus.
I don't think vinyl will ever go away completely. The format (with its potential for awesome graphics) will always be important to a small group of music lovers. But I can't see it ever again exciting young people to the degree that it once did, and the youth market is what drives the record industry.
Thanks for commenting, Diana!
i think one thing nobody seems to discuss is all of the OTHER merch that goes with a band/artist. shirts, posters, hats, hoodies, calendars, stickers, patches, photos, web banners, buddy icons, etc. and let's not forget the website and myspace pages. ALL of these items still need to be designed, and maybe now more distinctively than ever.
it pains me to see so many young bands/artists totally change their logo and visual direction on each album/project. i know that especially younger bands/artists do this because they're style (and themselves) change so much from year to year, but the best band logos never stop being relevant to the music (or the fans): KISS, Rolling Stones, Metallica, AC-DC, and i'm sure many more.
if the designers could convince the bands/artists/labels to funnel the same amount (if not much more) effort into a consistent "branding scheme," the ambiguity that spews forth from interface-less random-jam mp3 players (yes, i'm talking to you, iPod shuffle) would lessen. each band/artist would become important again, not just each song, or even the ability to have the songs. in other words, take the emphasis off the player and move it to the bands/artists.
i personally would much more be happy with this approach as a fan, because all my merch of the same band/artist would be cohesive and distinct from my merch of a different band/artist. as a designer, the joy would come from not just creating one piece of the puzzle (the album graphics), but the entire campaign (posters, shirts, etc). this would look far better than the current trend of "pay whoever will do this part for the cheapest and fastest."
you say you want to save the designer's job? skip the booklet and bust out some better posters!
and another thing: album art evolved from print media a long time ago; it's called the music video. now, i know there a lot of yall cringing out there, but really, isn't the music video a 4-D format (2-D plus time plus sound) that print isn't? doesn't the music video engage the fan like print can't? doesn't a music video have much more potential for insight into the artist's mind that print doesn't?
now, i know there have been a lot of crappy videos in the past 20 years. and yes, i've seen more than enough shiny cars and dancers in halter tops, enough stage dives and burnouts. i think the music video format got way to focused on literal story telling and not focused enough on visual escapades. plus, let's face it, whether you love or hate MTV, the way that they've shrugged the videos in favor of the "culture" has definitely put a dent into the relevance of the videos.
seriously, coverflow is neat, but why not videoflow? would you stay engaged with each song/album more if you could flip through videos instead of just JPEGs? i know i would. check out "word of mouth" by john reuben, and you'll see what i mean when i say the music video format has only been tickled. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAjyce9thMk
John,
You definitely make a good point about music videos...They began as an organic advance on conventional album art. The best early videos really were like moving album covers set to music: high-concept, non-narrative, notable for how they developed the persona(e) of the musician(s).
Thanks for commenting!