The artwork on the jacket of a vinyl record always seemed real… substantial. In fact, I remember that some records even included folded posters that could be pinned to your wall. Perhaps I’m stuck in a different time of the music industry, when hair bands and glam rock was more of the mainstream and the music industry had become more visual. Of course, I haven’t followed top-40 since the 80s so I shouldn’t really claim there aren’t modern versions of bands like Duran Duran and The Go-Gos.
The digital revolution: on one hand it’s facilitating the ubiquitous creation of art; on the other it’s displacing art with science. Warm analog recordings made way for clarity of sound and smaller products meant smaller, less substantial art. While I love my iPhone and the convenience of MP3s, they’ve amplified the de-coupling of music and visual art from products.
I was pleased that John Meadows covered this in the Direct to Disc episode of On The Log, largely because it made me think about the changes to book publishing and how the move to digital ink is affecting book buying and book reading habits. The biggest casualty of this evolution will be books that depend on visuals as part of the reading experience — children’s picture books — which depend on the vibrancy of colour, the warmth of tone, the use of space and the overall design which includes the dimensions, size, shape and materials. It would be quite an impressive piece of palm-sized technology that would translate that to the digital world.
Photo: Iconic (whiteboard) album covers uploaded by Simon Lieschke.
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