OUGD403 - Logotype - Research

I wanted to keep this rebranding quite music design focussed as it was the reason HMV began and has been there number one focus from the beginning, I bought this book by Hans Lijklema an image based book which looks at music related design through, concert posters, album covers, band logos and so on. The book contains a range of well known and unknown bands art work, never focussing on a specific style but a whole range of different styles, colour themes, typefaces and imagery, every piece of work in this book is very individual and eye catching. I have chosen a few which I found influential and interesting, the ones which I felt relate well to what I have looked at before and what will help me too meet my final piece.





This piece is from King Swifty's Record Shack, it is an exhibition piece showing the 2009 edition of Contre Temps music festival in strasbourg, a small annual French Electrogroove festival. This exhibit piece consists of hundreds of 7 inch single vinyls of various colour on a huge piece of wall. All the records are stored in the same design of LP sleeve with only the colour of the type changing. The Type reads Disco 45 which is reference to the British 1970's music magazine, famed for posting lyrics of popular current music. I like the typeface used it is very 70's and works well in a number of colours, the design as well is a very retro one, it is messy and inconsistent to make look like a music fun vibe. The installation as a whole is a very nice display piece and works well as a collective, more and more small music shops are choosing to fill there walls with old music images and album art, I must consider this in my designs.

This piece is a poster to advertise The Independent project shop, a record store in America which specialises in rare records, and widely unknown bands. Many of the products they sell are limited edition prints and pieces of art by the bands whose music they sell. I think that this business card by them is really effective and classy, it has a very abstract type layout but still feels very retro and clear. The use of brown on off white makes it look like the advert for a very old shop in a different era, which is very relevant to the store as they stock classic vinyl and when people think of vinyl records, the image of an older generation comes to mind.

This is one of two album cover designs for CD EP 'Build', released in 1994 by Tone, a rock band. The simplicity behind this design is really interesting it is clear, and very minimalist in the way it is just type and split off from the image below. The use of the bold black type for the bands name works well with the rough grey brown colour of the album sleeve, it is very effective next to the light type used for the album title, so that people know the name of the band which is the main point, the light type can be viewed as secondary as long as the main point is put across clear and strong.





This next piece is the album cover of Azymuth's self titled debut album, released in 1974. The design of the sleeve is so simple and eye catching it has a really interesting use of image within a symbol built around the main type. The black and white theme of type and image works really well next to the bold green type of the bands name to make it eye catching and clear. I must consider this use of colours when designing my own logotype for HMV.

This is a a poster designed by Invisible Creature, a design studio which works a lot with musicians, this piece in particular is for The National, it has a Swiss design feel to it yet with an abstract twist, the imagery has been shifted about and looks messy, which is unlike swiss design, the type has also been moved which makes the layout messy to, it still works very well as a poster in the way it is eye catching and still clear, it can be interpreted in different ways but the information for the concert is all there. It is an interesting use of a classic style twisted for modern purposes.