Looking through I'm reminded of how amazing Jeff Jones is (The Vaughn Bode stuff rules too, but in a different way). I wish there were a book simply collecting all the Idyl material. Not to give the impression I'm uninterested in the paintings / book covers Jones has done, because I love those too, anything with a Frazetta vibe and its own pulse I will probably love, but her pencil / ink work is so stunningly lyrical, I could just roll each page on my tongue...
The writing is cutesy and clever, but it's just an excuse for the perfect visuals.
It's weird, I'd never read a single issue of National Lampoon until very recently, but I swear I've seen a bunch of these long before, I'm probably thinking of her Heavy Metal work, which is also awesome... maybe it was in Cheval Noir... I'll have to dig them out and check.
I'm tired of the position taken when deriding CDs and championing LPs that the CD is too small and it sucks because it can't present visuals to a satisfying degree, and the LP is so big and perfect and the only valid way to present an album. We get it, you like records, you're so cool.
True, not all CD releases have amazing artwork and when they initially entered the market, the art from the records had to be scaled down to fit the jewelcase (we'll ignore longboxes), but plenty of LPs have boring as dirt artwork that fails on any scale. There is no right or wrong, best or worst. The same people that claim to hate CDs usually have a big hipster overdose on how awesome cassette tapes are, well, those are even smaller, you got a problem with that art scale, or in that case do you accept that it's just different and so no better or worse?
I love LP artwork, that scale is great, it's huge and a gatefold can be an incredible experience. This probably all has to do with programming related to scale and wonder in childhood, when we interacted with large colorful story books. That said, plenty of CDs have amazingly gorgeous artwork. Lots of the really exemplary design work I've seen has been in the Japanese market, an easy example is the experience of any Pizzicato 5 CD.
Here are just two I've got, the first is an example of dealing within the confines of the jewelcase, the second is expanding outwards, but still remaining within the expectations of compact disc scale.
First off, great cover, with the photo visible through the printed transparency.
Now how awesome is that... the cool transparency, a sticker of the cover photo and a massive circular booklet (there are awesome pictures on both sides and I folded it on itself, it's like twice as long)... this is masterful design within the jewelcase limits.
This is a really thick and airy package made of slightly soft clear plastic. Text is screened onto the outside, and the thickness combined with the reflective surfaces gives a really cool sense of depth. The use of the playing surface of the disc as a mirror is brilliant.
Again, the use of silver for reflective purposes working with the thick clear package confusing and enhancing the sense of depth
Hopefully this illustrates the thickness of the package. The booklet is super colorful and full of awesome pictures, contrasting with the stark exterior.
I'm just thinking about this now because earlier I was listening to the Cornelius 69/96 and 96/69 releases, and they are both wonderful and exciting designs and they are Compact Discs. If anyone could look at these and not at least grudgingly admit they are cool, then they are a liar.
Here's the cover of 69/96, I tried to bounce the flash off of it enough to show the texture of the printing on the cover. The cover is like a soft pink vinyl with thick ink. Super satisfying.
These are a bunch of shots of the inside of the booklet, which is 50 pages worth of cool pictures in all kinds of inks and paper consistencies (I didn't show any pages with glossy paper because they were just pictures of Keigo).
Finally, this is trying to illustrate how floppy the whole thing is.
Here's 96/69... totally awesome: silver obi strip, nice red sticker on the plastic, a sticker of the panicking guy on the jewelcase, a larger scene of panic on the disc, and a tiny booklet of disasters and monster attacks... If that isn't a cool package, what is?
Lots of situations are people trying to be cool and rejecting what they knew first, like teenagers acting out against their parents: I hate you dad! = I hate you Green Day CD! And I'm sure lots of people are really convinced the LP is the best most superior format (In my opinion, the best format doesn't mean me bumping into one of my Beverly Hills 808303 records and gouging a huge scratch in it, and I know the "treat your items with respect" argument applies to me, but it's not like I set the thing out like a coaster), probably because they are getting old and nostalgic and don't want to feel obsolete and close to death.
I wonder how the sheet music salesmen felt when wax cylinders came along...
"This is an idiotic inferior way to experience music! Who wants to sit by themselves and hear music! It is a social experience... a gathering of friends in revelry!"
A "truth" is that in most cases you just like whatever you are most familiar with, whatever you knew earlier in most cases. When the ignorant goons slamming CDs are dead, and hip older people are reminiscing about how great the CD was as a discrete and portable listening storage medium, and hip kids are buying old CDs for ridiculous prices to capture some cultural nostalgia, younger kids who grew up on MP3's exclusively will laugh at the materialistic embarrassment.
Remember when the only art was a tiny pixelated image to go with the crunch of the mp3... these newfangled streaming WAV's just don't sound as warm.
I'm sure to cover their asses, some will back-peddle and claim what they REALLY think makes vinyl better is the sound quality, and I'm sure an unplayed test pressing right off the master tapes sounds awesome, but you know what else sounds great if you have the eq set right, a CD. And it's all just depending on your needs. I personally like none greater or less. I find LPs annoying in that they are too big, and can sound like shit when scratched. I also love them for the same reasons. Some claim a CD is worthless when it gets scratched, the solution is to not treat your CDs like shit. I hate that my CDs will probably not last very long, but I love being able to play a song on infinite repeat, I like really long compositions... I also love the crackle on an old Enka record, so it all depends on the person and situation.
You can't be right.
0 observations:
Post a Comment