Music Review: Class Actress/Rapproacher

Class Actress' debut album, Rapproacher, is the closest one can come to audial-based time travel. The premise of being inspired by pop icons and imagery of the 80's is far from novel or even interesting at this point but none of the 11 tracks represent vague inspirations; they represent the artists' thorough obsession with making perfectly crafted atmospheres. The imagery created gives listeners visions of mid 1980's late-evening escapades in Manhattan, irony-free neon, and back issues of Warhol-era Interview magazine.

There is nothing tongue-in-cheek about the album's odes to the era they harken. Its writing is serious and emotional; consistently sowing a cynical yet optimistic romanticism throughout. Its melodies equally convey the same emotions with an enjoyable dosage of decadent synthesizer.

For Class Actress' audience- children of the 80's mostly (author included)- Rapproacher is the closest we will come to our long desired trip back to an era we were old enough to be in but too young to be a part of.

The album can be streamed here.

Buffalo '76

I came across these wonderful photos from Flickr user a59rambler taken around downtown Buffalo in 1976.

The angles in combination with the parts of the car the camera picks up actually compliments these photos in  a way that almost gives it an extra level of authenticity. In fact, in the picture above, the antenna seems to go perfectly with the church steeple, competing with each other for height.

I can imagine the excitement of a driver, going under the fairly new Marine Midland tower, a soaring monument for a Buffalo that does not exist but that one that the Bank and local leaders hoped would. 

Once experiencing the brief jolt of large scale newness in the tower, you're sent back into the crippling post-apocalyptic scenery of weed infested sidewalks, crumbling vacant lots and a beautiful but worn out train terminal, unknowingly approaching a painful death.

Thinking about these pictures and that era, there is no sense of obvious improvement or further decay since then, merely a shift. Some of these landscapes have improved, others have worsened, one fixed leak still opens another thirty-five years later.

The Book of Disquiet

For the third and final book design project of the semester, I chose Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. It's a fascinating read that is actually more enjoyable when you open it up to a random page at any moment in your day and just read a couple passages.

While coming up with concepts the themes that seemed to have the most potential to carry a visual impact would be his usage of heteronyms and the overall mysterious aura of his writing that comes with being a pleasant, low key Portuguese man who seems to drown, alone, in his own neurosis (at least he channeled it into timeless literature for the rest of us).
 
My original cover had a list of all the heteronyms he used in his lifetime but it never felt as exciting as I thought it should despite the idea feeling clever.

The cover concept I decided on was not quite where it ended up going until I came up with the title page spread. Starting with the idea of the book title coming out of his head, I felt as if random passages shooting out of his head in the background in Courier (early 20th century literature and Courier always go perfectly together in my head) would help convey the vibe the writing gives off, not to mention I feel that not reading the book in order is a far better way to enjoy it, hence the randomly selected and placed passages.

You can still see some of his passages on the cover but they are further muted by the color bands that work because different people will view them as different things (are these things moving forward? backward? Is it abstract lightning? Weird arms pointing at him?) while making people curious to know what is going on inside the author's mind.

And that was that for designing books this Summer session for academic purposes. I hope to share some more online that are actually being published.

*I should also mention that all copy is obtained from the Penguin edition of this book, as translated by Richard Zenith. This project was created for academic purposes only.

One Basket

In our book design class, we were all assigned to pick a book written by Edna Ferber and to come up with a design concept for that book.

I chose "One Basket" which is a nice collection of short stories that, almost 100 years later, feels like an endearing look at an emerging, urbanizing America (Illinois and Wisconsin particularly). In the short stories there are some interesting common themes. Burdens of men and women within their anticipated roles, the effects of war on those who stay home and transitioning from a rural to urban society stood out the most to me.

For the cover spread I took a map of Chicago from 1920 that ended up serving as a pattern of sorts for the spread.

For the title page spread I wanted to take a small element from the cover spread. I really loved the weirdness of the pigeon in a human suit. I also liked the typeface of the "one" inside the egg basket (the type was cut out from an old railway ad from around 1910).  I thought listing the seven stories (original versions have 31) in an almost illegible way would add some intrigue to it (and I really liked how courier was working within the context of this text).

In general, I thought it would be interesting to do a collage that gave a sense of the era and some of the surrounding tensions within these characters while feeling fresh for a 2011 audience that might not typically think of reading her works.

I haven't done a collage since 2008 and I really should do more. There are so many unique and complex stories you can tell in the context of a collage which ended up being the best possible way for me to make Ferber's writings connect with a new audience.

Peter Saville Timeline

One of the more unique projects I've been assigned since starting my graduate program was to design a 20x30 poster about a graphic designer of my choice with the content being heavily focused on a timeline.

I chose Peter Saville, mostly known for his album art that he created for New Order and Joy Division. He's also designed the most recent England Football kits and did much of the city branding for his hometown of Manchester in the mid to late 00's.

Like his color coding system on "Power, Corruption, and Lies" and the single release of "Blue Monday", I put his works on the right side of the poster in a way that made it feel like a multi-colored, unified element.

 

The timeline felt very cluttered when it was all in front of the same, white background but the shades of gray that switch off from decade to decade really solves all of the cluttering issues, thankfully.

I always admired his use of abstraction, particularly his use of line weights in "Get Ready" and his albums that had no text whatsoever. I feel like the treatment I give his actual name at the bottom of the poster reflects that in a sense.

The color combination is made to reflect the look of Factory Records but it also feels European in general (reminds me of Euro airport and train station signage kind of), especially with the light, italicized Helvetica.

It's not blatantly Saville, but subtly so...I'd like to think that's the way he would prefer anyways.

Eyes of a Blue Dog

For my book design course, we picked a short story to layout into book form. I chose Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "Eyes of a Blue Dog". Marquez' style lends to abstract imagery which helped me embrace and execute what ended up being a pretty thorough concept that is experienced throughout the book.

I thought the story would be best experienced in a rhythm within a grid that felt a sort of refined energy. The grid is controlled, yet unpredictable and in one spread, broken. The "eyes" flow around in the same spirit as they do on the cover in a way that helps you feel the kind of bizarre, unpredictable flow you experience in a dream (which is what this short story chronicles).

It was very fulfilling to have this kind of creative control and freedom over a product that contained very enjoyable and unique content. I'm pretty confident I have done the writing justice with my final product.

Total

I really enjoy learning about the behind-the-scenes process for designing things that interest me. In the case of the new cover art for an album covering the lengthy career of Joy Division/New Order, we get to see that from this blog post from the designer himself.

Endevouring to capture the essence of Joy Division and New Order, both Peter Saville and I agreed that typography could be the link. We agreed that the Helvetica Heavy Italic from Technique, conveyed the 'look' of New Order, however Joy Division was predominantly uppercase. By merging the two, a TOTAL was created.

The design is a 'nod' to Run2's commerical packaging; while the out-of-register CMYK references the perils of clients printing without proofs, which now-a-days happens all too frequently…

I initially positioned TOTAL as large as it would fit on the cover, only for the band to say it had too much white space.

For me, the 'O' was the sexiest letter, the overlapping letterforms created a further Technique / Run 2 memory and funnily enough was the only letter to appear in New Order, Joy Division and TOTAL. So I decided that to reduce the white space, I would zoom into the kaleidoscopic 'O' and wrap the rest around.

Clients are always requesting 'make it larger', so here was an opportunity not to be missed. I love the irony that the final design is massive and out-of-register... yet beautiful.

Written by Howard Wakefield, creative director Studio Parris Wakefield.

It really is a fantastic cover that feels like New Order...unlike "Republic" and it's singles (see earlier post).