Seminar feedback

Developing Practice

"A good start with broad research about music, genres and culture.

I need to be more focused and specific in your research. This means making decisions and choices - e.g. don't just talk about a genre - tell us what is the defining image of that genre and why.

The idea of 100 versions of an iconic album cover is good. Responding to a piece of work is a tried and tested methodology that many other creatives use, so it can work for you too. (Think of Jasper Johns flag paintings)."

I should select an iconic album cover from each decade and then start remaking them exploring materials, processes, slowly include contemporary references and re-make them for today.

Research sources

Different periods, processes and technology:

• Punk_collage, Photo montage 
• New typefaces
• New printing techniques: process colours, half screens

Popular culture > Grunge music > Posters > music imagery > self publishing

• Jazz posters by Mytton Wiliams (printing company in Bath) 100 prints a day
• Mary wager: college artist, surrealism
• Beatles development from roots to Acid/Hippie Psychedelic music
• Crass: unknown Punk band, how are they marketed?
• David Carson: Revolver, Raggn magazine

Pick an iconic cover for each decade x-x (some movements overlap each other)

• Respond by making x-amount of covers of it
• How does the type change over the years
• Symbolic messages, e.g. the queen might not be relevant anymore. (patriarchal figure) New references? Telling stories about our time (socially/politically)

Music subcultures in magazines

Developing Practice

Here are my notes from reading "Design after Dark, the story of danceflor style" by Cynthia Rose.

Punk and Bolshevik Classicism 

left: ID magazine of street fashion,
right: example of Bolshevik design conventions

Bolshevism

Soviet style Symbols: hammer and sickle badges, Dr.Zhivago hats, Heroes of the people- Marx, Lennin, Russian inspired: figures such as Gagarin, Vladimir Mayakovsky.


Social and Political values: 

To show liberation, angst against social disarray of 1970's under Margaret Thatcher.

Going back full circle

Developing Practice

When I went to Fopp, I spoke to one of the staff about vinyl music as I noticed there is a big selection of them now in store.

"Vinyl is more popular than it ever has been before back in the old days."

I'm not sure it's been at a record high but it definitely has picked up momentum and more and more people are buying and collecting them again. It is trendy again.

Other the ages, music has gotten smaller and smaller. The Vinyl's were massive, and gradually under the test of time, smaller forms have music has taken its place. There's been an emphasis on: 

portable, accessible, on the go, fast paced lifestyles, less and less physical.

Have we gone so far from the physicality of music that we have no gone full circle?
 Are people appreciating having ownership of a big item that they can feel and touch?

Primary Research Collage

Developing Practice

I went into my local music shop to look at album covers first hand. I took photographs from a sample of each category.

My aim was to investigate whether there was a consistent stylistic conventions across albums under the same genre.

Dance

Geometry, abstraction, colorful, pattern, vivid, alive

Country

Earthy colors, brown paper, nature's roots, simplicity, line

Urban

cityscape, street feel, graffiti, gold, 

Funk

Lively, bright colors, happy, groovy

Metal

Dark, ominence, powerful, visual representations of death, angsty, male audience

Music culture Proposal

Q. To explore music culture from a period or a particular genre, to see how that has influenced contemporary illustration. 

Illustration inspired artwork:

• Typography
• Print and screen based processes
• Pattern and illustration as album cover work. 

Examples of branding project that I really enjoyed was: Sonic Machines

Proposed Project Question

Developing Practice

Contemporary Illustration

This is defined as: 

"implies modern, current, up to date, fashionable and present day, so peering too far back into a dim and distant past may draw into the frame images that today's audience would struggle to recognise or remember" - Lawraence Zeegan Crush

Contemporary illustration reflects the "voice of people" as described as Steven Heler, it tells us about social and cultural history. Many of these images are shown through the medium of cultural magazines.

Therefore studying the context of when such iconic works was produced is relevant because it affected what it had to say and how it was received by the general public. 

Iconic works