ARTWORK Jon Wozencroft
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A house style means an overall visual approach for
a particular set of graphic items, i.e. album covers for a record label,
or a part of a label, or for a series of specific recordings, or even the
covers of a particular artiste. 4AD Records in London had an elegant non-specific
house style (developed by Vaughan Oliver) as did Blue Note under Reid Miles.
ECM jazz records possess a very cool conceptual approach whereas the band
Chicago used a very distinctive logotype devised by John Berg and designed
by Nick Fresciano. Charley Records, Arista Freedom, Wyndham Hill, and the
Cruisin' album series have more genre-oriented house styles. The following
text outlines the motives and criteria for one example of house style, namely
Touch, an independant
avant-garde outfit based in London.
The music is the principle thing -- music that is truly
alternative and about change. You rarely get to hear it on the radio. It's
profile in the megastores is negligible. There is no advertising budget,
no magazine coverage. But it's music that you're passionate about, so cover
design becomes even more crucial for small labels as a way of getting "difficult"
music heard. Hopefully, if you produce consisently good work, someone who
buys one CD will keep buying subsequent releases. It's trust that makes
the first narrative, and a mark of respect to the musician(s) and to the
buyer that great care goes into the design.
Touch started in 1982. Until 1986, it came in magazine
form, publishing new music alongside specially commissioned work from artists,
writers, photographers, and graphic designers. Our first CD came out in
1988, Ignotum Per Ignotius by the Hafler Trio, packaged in a custom-made
slipcase, in a twilight period before the collapse of Rough Trade distribution,
the retailer colossus, and the onset of obligatory barcodes.
Acts of resistance against the CD format have been
long and various, not only because plastic jewel cases are so tiresome --
making more of the print medium is a way of expressing the contrast between
analogue and digital. But wallets, slipcases, posters, and pouches become
an increasingly costly affair. As a result, the product ends up having to
be assembled at home. Reprints are a nightmare. Not only is there the tabloid
conservatism of retailers and distributors to contend with, the print quality
and attention to detail of CD pressing plants leaves a great to be desired.
Even a change of paper stock from the regulation issue is to ask for trouble,
usually compounded by the fact that you have paid handsomely for the bother
of being different. Better mastering technology and the digital origination
of film are big steps forward, but the eye for detail of the master printer
is disappearing.
So the Touch "house style" is first of all
to get the best out of this process. With Touch covers, the main ambitions
are to suggest the emotions and the atmosphere of each particular recording,
usually choosing images that form a lateral relationship to the music and
its title. For me, photography is a more resonant medium than computer-generated
or graphic design: it is better at expressing qualities of light. The images
are about the thirst for beauty. Actually, I don't like to say anything
much about this: the images must speak for themselves.
If anything, the covers follow a minimalist aesthetic
which, over a period of time, become distinctive by virtue of what it avoids.
If the music is somewhat ahead of its time, the last thing you want is design-as-fashion-statement.
The title never invade their spaces, so set alongside the photograph, there
is a fine balance between the vivid and the understated. The subject matter
of the images can be strong to the point of being iconic, but a sense of
movement and surprise comes from the intriguing relationship between what
the front image actually is, and how it might relate to the music -- expressing
the potential of complex and intuitive meanings is a simple, modernist device
which underlines the critical nature of the work. (The documentary film
of Chris Marker, La Jetee, Gysin & Burroughs' The Third Mind, the film
opening title sequences of Saul Bass are among the many points of reference...).
This tension between the singular image and the richness of meaning that
comes from the contents inside has turned into a litmus test to set against
the computer world's claim for "interactivity".
Once you accept their obvious defeciencies in size
and tactility, CDs do have an advantage over record covers in that they
allow you to create a dynamic interplay between front/back/tray card/label/booklet
and centrefold. Each transisition can be treated like a film edit. Playing
around with the aspect ratio of 35mm, TV, and widescreen is also a way of
breaking the square frame of the CD format, and all the stock information
that you have to put on the package can simply be small print, designed
around the barcode. This too should always be as small as possible.
These CD covers are fragments of a much larger work;
in themselves, they by no means tell the whole story, and in some cases,
the front image is not even the most "active" within the overall
design. The jumbo jet of Dark Continent opens up to reveal a flare of sunlight
and an eye in close-up; the saturated cityscape on the front of Beauty Nowhere
is contrasted with, amonst other images, Scala's singer Sarah Peacock in
front of a shopping mall window, a line of vodka bottles in a duty-free
shop, an empty coach careering across the runway at Porto airport, and on
the back of the booklet, the first man in space strapped into his spacesuit.
In terms of the elusive qualities of emotion and atmosphere,
hopefully a narrative emerges out of the unpressured observation of pictures
that suggest personal moments of rapture, and their primacy amidst all the
entertainment out there. Every aspect is invested with a kind of sublimation.
It is idealistic work that tries to create a field of generosity and space
for contemplation -- to want to look again, each time you listen.
Copyright Jon Wozencroft/Dorling Kindersley Limited
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