Graphic Design in Pop

d) Potentially, sure. But though I care about design and the visual arts I still think the music inside is more important - that's just a personal preference. It is wholly reasonable to me that there are design freaks out there who lament the tyrrany that is the availability of album art work only via the purchase of worthless music CDs.

i) Kate went to art school, yes? Surely there are others. (Yo Ethan.)

b) All the time. I'm probably really bad about this. Sleeves I think are nice are more likely to make me buy the records I buy on impulse (though I buy on impulse records with covers I'm not impressed by, too). Also the other way for covers I don't like. Hard to think of examples divorced from my muscial pre-knowledge, but maybe: Dylan's John Wesley Harding cover probably helped keep me away until I knew enough about him from reading, and other records, that it became irrelevant what the cover looked like.

e) See (d).

God, I've had no caffeine for a week until today when I drank like 72 oz. of it, 24 of them a few hours ago. 4 AM is my normal bedtime, ha, but I'm NEVER going to get tired.

Everyone is going to wake up today and read their ILM and say 'what rubbish! Josh has been awake all night replying to all the threads!' Hahaha.

B) Yes and yes.

C) Yes; that's when they work best.

D) Yes.

E) Sure.

F) Tomato > Underworld, but not by much (not really a compliment for either, but the sleeve for Second Toughest in the Infants is nice.)

G) Not necessarily. Sometimes people outside of the band are better at interpreting the music than the band itself.

H) I do like it when labels can be associated with a certain graphic style. Blue Note, Factory, etc.

a) Let's get the list thing out of the way. List, if you must, outstanding record sleeves, or particularily poor ones.

Rather than getting into a list of categorising the "album art canon" or whatever, the last time I was seriously impressed with the graphic design of a CD- cover, to the point where I actually thought "wow, what a lovely *thing* I am pleased simply with the visual aspect of this" was the Sigur Ros album. Maybe the silver circular insert echoing the CD itself was a cheap trick, but it was still an effective one. My all- time favourite still remains the uber-cool diskette format of "Power, Corruption and Lies" (spelling mistake and all). Though the Spiritualized pill-packaging gimick was still pretty durn KEWL, especially when it was carried through to the liner notes. Yay for the prog-rock concept album not being dead!

b) Did a good sleeve ever make you buy a bad record? Did a bad sleeve almost stop you discovering musical gems?

God, yes. And yes, too. I used to go on cheap CD-gluts at Venus Records, and buy a dozen $1 CDs at a time, based on silly things like sleeve design and the bands names. Most of them were awful, but some were nice. And bad sleeves... argh, the panty lines on the live Velvets album continue to turn me off. I taped it off a friend, but cannot bring myself to own the album itself.

c) Are some sleeve designs the perfect corollary for the music inside, to the extent that they might almost have come from the same creative intelligence? (I'm thinking perhaps of 'Snowbug' by the High Llamas, or sleeves by Denim and Cornelius. Or Yes and Roger Dean!)

In an ideal world, this should always be the case. Though I spent ages as a wee dot looking at my dad's Yes albums, trying to imagine what weird otherworldly music would eminate from the discs, (grown men! wearing cloaks!) and I was eventually disappointed with the hippie prog-rock drivel. An unpopular answer will probably be to say that this is how I see "OK, Computer". Like it or hate it, the whole album, cover, insert and music, all worked together to form a complete artwork. Lyric sheets that went well beyond "just the words".

d) In a pomo superflat kind of world where we don't assume the inherent superiority of some artforms over others, is anyone out there prepared to go so far as to say that sleeves are as important as the records they contain? Can graphic design be as 'artistic' as music?

However, the idea of saying that the sleeve design is more important than music is just silly. It's just a different artform. You wouldn't say "cinema is more important than architecture!!!" would you? They are related, but not in the same way that you wouldn't have ballet without both the music and the dance, as music without dance is still music, but dance without music is... well... silly. Graphic design exists externally, it's an interesting but slightly artificial development that graphic design has become so linked with the album as "artform". I mean, how does classical music- which was developped to be performed, rather than recorded as part of a package- fit into that equation?

e) Can we imagine a parallel world where hack musicians are commissioned at the 11th hour to make complementary sounds for the latest meisterwerks produced by genius designers, who've been locked up for years in the studio with their G3s and laser printers, giving painful birth?

BWAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!!!! You've never worked in an advertising office, have you?

f) Sometimes designers make music. Are there genres they're better at? (The breed seems to take to techno or kitsch bubblegum -- cf. Underworld / Tomato, or bands like Delaware and Stereo Total).

No, I find no correlation. Except maybe that graphic designers are anally retentive twats who are more drawn to styles of music where they are able to be "auteur" (maybe explains the techno link?). Bubblegum is historically as much about packaging and presentation as the music- this explains some of the appeal. Yet none of this explains why there are so many ex-art students in genres like spacerock/drone?

g) If there's some sort of moral imperative for bands to play their own instruments, write their own songs, etc, shouldn't that be extended to designing their own sleeves?

Another absurd proposition. Songwriting ability and performing talent are two related skills/talents, which often overlap, but often don't. (I don't hold it against Brian Wilson that he didn't play a note of bass on Pet Sounds.) Music and graphic design are two very different artforms, with very different skillsets. Sometimes they overlap, more often they don't. Why would I hold it against a band if they were talented songwriters, but not talented visual artists? I mean, god forbid I ever have to look at another John Squire designed sleeve again. ;-) (j/k - the Stone Roses' sleeve art took a bizarre downturn around the same time the music did, so I can't help but think there's a connection.)

h) Outline, in 300 words or less (Bellbottom, 8 point), the relationship between indie labels and their in house designers: 4AD and Russell Mills, Factory and Peter Saville, etc.

i) Lots of rock writers and musicians contribute to this forum, but I'm not aware of the presence of any graphic designers. Why? Is thinking about music an alien culture for them? Are they so buried in right brain formalism that putting words together bores and stresses them?

Like I previously stated, I worked for an advertising agency for two years, and this nearly killed my love of art and design to the point where I have not been to a gallery or museum or even been to the art section of my local bookshop for over a year. I disagree that there are no designers here- but design has moved on. Ask how many people here are *web* designers, and I think you'll find a great deal more.

j) - z) If you want any more you can sing it yourself (Barnbrook Gothic, 36 point).

By the way, I was an art major, too. Oh, OK, one tiny insight: Isn't David Hamilton's "White Album" the first and last word on the subject? Who was that group inside the sleeve?

" Are some sleeve designs the perfect corollary for the music inside, to the extent that they might almost have come from the same creative intelligence? (I'm thinking perhaps of 'Snowbug' by the High Llamas, or sleeves by Denim and Cornelius."

I tend to be more impressed by *good* CD packaging as it's more difficult, and it demonstrates an ability to adapt to new design problems - size restrictions, environmental restrictions, etc. We recently got the 3-CD "Man from Ipanema" (I think it's called). Of course, Antonio Carlos Jobim is dead and could not have designed it, but this was the first packaging and design in recent memory that just floored me. It comes in a little CD-sized spiral notebook and uses different colors of paper cut in different shapes for the inner sleeves - one is a shell, another leaves and I can't remember the other one. The cover is transparent, and there is a lot of creative paper cutting and folding. It's just so elegant and light as air, with soft corals and blues for the colors. I swear it's almost as good as the CDs inside, I love holding it. I guess that's partly because I love good design and partly also because I've heard stuff like "Corcovado" eight million times. Also, the CD does not have "Surfboard" on it, which is inexcusable.

I personally love all the photographs on Sparks album covers, but that's not so much graphic design as brilliant staged photography. But I could write essays on some of those, especially the plane crash one.

A couple of years ago, while thumbing through CD drawers at WNUR in Chicago, I sliced my hand open on the packaging of Aube's "Metal de Metal" (I think)---the record composed entirely of the sound of big sheets of metal, and therefore packaged in little, *sharp* sheets of metal. I bled over the latter half of the As.

Only later did it occur to me that the Aube record based on water sounds, which is packaged in a thin plastic baggie containing actual water, was shelved right next to the metal record. I haven't been up to NUR in a while, but I'd be willing to bet that at some point, the metal punctured the plastic and a great deal of discs by bands whose names start with A were ruined.

I only mention that to mention this: record packaging should not involve metal.

As for best cover design: Sam Prekop's self-titled solo record--- which, incidentally, is a painting by Prekop himself (although I can't speak for the actual design and text layout). Seeing this on vinyl makes me want to cry.

Max Tundra, "Some Best Friend You Turned Out To Be"

The Fall, "This Nation's Saving Grace", "Grotesque (After The Gramme)", a lot of their earlier albums actually.

Aphex Twin, "Richard D. James Album"

Delia Derbyshire / John Baker / David Cain, "BBC Radiophonic Music"

Telstar Ponies, "Voices From The New Music"

Stereolab, "Aluminium Tunes"

particular unfavourite, Radiohead, "OK Computer". I didn't even like the design to "Kid A" as much as I thought I might. I much preferred the music on "Kid A" to anything they'd done previously, though.

Duffers Oasis -Be here now. Prince - Emancipation. Public Enemy - fear of a black planet (great LP though)

b) Not a bad LP but not one I listen to oftern is Peter Sellers - songs for swingin' Sellers. Extremely black, extremely funny. Amazing it came out on EMI in 1959, it's the sort of sleeve which punk acts in the late 70's would have rejected as too sick.

c) Basement Jaxx -Remedy. That sensual, multicultural, cosmopolitan vibe is well reflected by the sleeve. Aphex Wins - Ambient works vol II - Industrial archelogy as music.

d)No . yes.

e)I thought some music was being comissioned for art e.g Stereolab.

The sleeve to Look Into The Eyeball by David Byrne is one of my current favourites. The multiple covers for Different Class should also get a mention but I'll just leave it there for now.

d) In a pomo superflat kind of world where we don't assume the inherent superiority of some artforms over others, is anyone out there prepared to go so far as to say that sleeves are as important as the records they contain? Can graphic design be as 'artistic' as music?

Has no-one mentioned Mike Alway and El yet? Isn't there a story that once at El they discovered the person reviewing the singles at NME that week was a huge El fan. Unfortunately, the records due to be released hadn't been delivered in time so Alway simply sent in the sleeves on their own, inevitably getting Single Of The Week. Whilst this obviously isn't only because of the sleeves (the fact they were El for instance). Alway suggested that not only was there nothing wrong with only sending the sleeves out, but that was exactly was El was about.

"We were making music at the record end, there weren't any concerts. We weren't interested in that sort of thing at all. There was no money, no promotion, nothing, it was all about the artefact. That's what you put out, the artefact. Therefore, you don't really need to hear the music."

e) Can we imagine a parallel world where hack musicians are commissioned at the 11th hour to make complementary sounds for the latest meisterwerks produced by genius designers, who've been locked up for years in the studio with their G3s and laser printers, giving painful birth?

Again, didn't Alway used to do this sort of thing?

The sleeve is pretty simple: a high contrast image of a man on an old- fashioned bicycle, and a mixture of small Clarendon and big early 70s fat paper cut-out-style lettering. The associations this sleeve set up in my mind were: Brazilian movie poster, circa 1972. De Sica's warm, socialist realist 50s Italian movie 'Bicycle Thieves'. The sound of bicycle spokes. Early 70s radical chic. Sunshine, the light sensuality of Brazilian music, a certain atmosphere of exotic sensuality. I imagined all that mixed with the cutting edge electronic that is Warp's trademark, and rushed to the check out counter.

When I played the CD, it was bits of rap spliced in innovatively unintelligible ways over early Aphex Twin-style electronic backings. I was probably a lot more disappointed than I would have been if I hadn't had all those false expectations set up by the sleeve. My only consolation was the thought that I can now go and make myself the kind of music I was imagining such a sleeve to contain: a clanky yet electronic mixture of bicycle spoke sounds and 70s Brazilian radical chic.

Actually, this sleeve looks a lot like the (excellent) graphics Mike Alway is currently doing for Alan McGee's label Poptones. And it was misleading in the same way. I haven't bought any Poptones releases because I know that although the sleeves look so alluring and exotic, childish and colourful and quirky, the music is probably the usual McGee formula of feebly sincere powerpop.

I wonder to what extent record sleeve design is always going to hold out some sort of false utopia which the music can never quite deliver on? I've been toying in recent essays with the idea of Design as the closest thing we have now to a religion or a philosophy with a vision of The Good and The Beautiful. If that's the case (and you certainly don't see many throat-catchingly Utopian lifestyle magazine spreads about the promise inherent in music these days -- at least not outside of Bjork interviews!) how can music ever compete with the design that surrounds it? How can a diversion compete with a religion?

Fuck, I might have bought that for the name, for the first part at least. It sounds so academic, instructional and impersonal - "Vocal Studies", like some fifties record on proper breathing techniques.

When I was a teenager I had a massive case of Smiths-itis, in no small part due to the cover art, which was there to signpost all sorts of other, complementary, cultural artefacts. And although today we'd call them 'screen grabs' these pictures pointed me in the direction of Cocteau, Warhol, and all manner of groovy things that make it easier to be ambitious in the provinces. Does anyone here reckon this still happens, and which groups - not B&S, which is an empty version of the Smiths' regime - are similarily engaged?

Nick's correct to identify Design Zen as a form of secular religion and there are probably quite a few of us here who are weary of the concept of 'design classic' to boot. Orthodoxy, to me, is a VERY bad thing. Suggests to me it's time to rip it up and start again.

Oh and BTW, when a label has a recognised house style that causes its aficionados to splash out, but what's inside the sleeve is utter pants, that's the first sign that yer favourite label is about to go massively off the boil. Could this be the beginning of the end for Warp? Or will this come in September when they release Vincent Gallo's LP?

Please don't tell any of my Art History teachers that I mistook David for Richard or vice-versa. "In Every Homepage A Heartache."

What, then, is the logical, obvious antithesis to "The White Album"? Not Prince's "Black Album," but The Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat," of course--though I've always had trouble seeing that skull (just as I did in Holbein).

Incidentally, I once had a Folkways album made up entirely of the sounds of bicycles--gears, bells, spokes, rattling frames--recorded long before "Tour De France." Also one of the few albums I gave away almost as quickly as I got it--to a bicycle racer I knew.

If you buy your furniture from thrift shops, is that the same as being Unitarian?

Oh well, at least they released an album that year (Fairport Convention's "What We Did On Our Holidays") with a cover of a vandalised blackboard at a famously leftish / radical British university of the time. In an indulgent way I like the idea of this being the filter through which Paris in May '68 reached Britain.

some of my faves:

} Mike Mills's sleeves for Cibo Matto's "Viva La Woman", & his work on Air's "Moon Safari" and the related singles & videoes

} Just about everything Julian House @ intro has done for Stereolab... as well as the sleeves for "Emperor Tomato Ketchup" "Aluminum Tunes" & "the Underground is Coming" by S'lab, and the "Turn On" EP by Tim Gane & Sean O' Hagan

}High Llamas' "Buzzle Bee" & "Snowbug"

}Siesta's Free Design reissue comps

}lots of Saul Bass

}some of Andy Votel's Twisted Nerve sleeves

}Add N to (X), "On the Wires of Our Nerves" & "Avant Hard"

}the US edition of Mouse on Mars' "Niun Niggung", as well as the related singles

}the Slits' "Cut"

}Masakazu Kitayama of HELP! Japan- pretty much everything he's done for Trattoria records. }EYE of Boredoms, for Shock City Shockers, which, bizarrely, became the back cover of Beck's Midnite Vultures (sadly , MV lacks the refractive holographic typeface in a fabulous font i wish i knew the title of) }pretty much everything by Futura 2000 )the Upsetters, "Super Ape"

i could go on forever. i get really disappointed when a favorite artist who usually gives great sleeve comes up w/ a bad one on the followup. ah, Nick, by the way, the Folktronic sleeve is fucking fabulous as is the US version of Stars Forever. my only gripe is that Matt Jacobsen doesn't do vinyl! they need to be bigger!

i think it's rather sad that many industry types don't realize that digital downloads aren't as harmful to the biz because people like myself still adore record sleeves and CD booklets. i like having something to look at and explore visually as well as aurally... Boards of Canada have gone so far as to but braille on the LP cover of "Music Has the Right to Children" and the "Hi Scores" EP, giving almost a full sensory experience... all we need now are scratch & sniff sleeves! it's always refreshing to find that an artist cares just as much about the packaging of their album AND about the music therein.

damn you, nick, for starting such an erotically charged thread!!

PS- i'm a design student, so i guess you'd consider me a musician and a designer...

Saw them at, I think, Stafford Futurama in 1981.

'Linder continues to work in music and visual art. Latter day projects have included the composition of her own requiem, entitled 'Clint Eastwood, Clare Offreducio And Me'. The Linder requiem connects with a larger fascination with Eastwood something explored in her musical performance - art presentation The Working Class Goes To Paradise. "I am the bearded woman," she says. "I'm looking at Clint Eastwood, redemption, revenge and the European tradition of bearded female saints."'

Momus's best sleeve 'timelord' and I do love the ones where his chin has been inexpertly airbrushed smaller too.

Malcom Garrett's older bitter brother (Steve)graduated from Salford Uni about three years ago,He was going through a whicker-weave vibe at the time,can't see it reaching any seminal sleeves though

as for artists doing their own cover, even if you were to consider design 'art' and had crossover sensibilities, the tools are so different and fairly sophisticated. it would take so long for the musician to get the hang of it enough to get their vision out (and know all the techniques, visual history, current trends, etc.) that it's not worth it. simple specialist division of labor stuff. it's like saying a screenwriter should direct, star in, light, style, edit, and do sound for their movie to make the vision truly theirs. they're gonna be shitty at half that stuff and then the vision gets lost. similarly designers aren't gonna go as far in music as someone totally dedicated to it. besides, designers would never leave their dayjobs and risk not being able to afford cool cars and shoes.

I'll answer this one part before turning in for the night. I am completely floored by the packaging and design that went into Lusk's Free Mars album. Possibly one of my faves ever... Too bad the music doesn't do the art justtice.

as for a parallel world where hack musicians are commissioned at the 11th hour to make complementary sounds for the latest meisterwerks produced by genius designers, who've been locked up for years in the studio with their G3s and laser printers, giving painful birth? i was talking recently to a friend about geoff mcfetridge's design for zwan which seems kind of like this situation. geoff is sort of a design star who has books of his work out, special edition japanese magazines, gallery shows around the world etc. etc. and he basically just lent some of his typical style to that new billy corrigan band which seemed kinda ridiculous to me. as if they wanted to jump on his cool/hip train. if i was in a band i'd be so much more arrogant about it. like 'you come up with something brand new that's just for me'. especially someone like billy corrigan. but i guess this kind of thing isn't so weird. i mean having hipgnosis do your sleeve in the 70's meant you've arrived. and i'm sure coop or kozik or shag is more well-known than some of the anonymous garage-a-billy bands they've done posters for.

'nuff said

as a consolation of sorts, at least DVD albums provide a platform for a different level of design/sound affiliation with videos accompanying each track and possibly galleries and galleries of photography and conceptual art added to illustrate further the ideas behind the album. the problem with such a practice is it requires MORE time to engage with (unlike just looking at a couple of static images in the form of cover art) and the way you can engage with it is more constrictive (only on a PC or TV screen). i have the Orbital 'Altogether' DVD but i've only watched about half of it, once.

well, let me know if your marketing ploy works , so i can do it next