I haven’t been able to find out much about her, but Amy Borrell’s work (the coincidentally named ‘Flying Kites’ above) says enough for me.  Her illustrations are gentle and strange at the same time.  It’s worth taking a look around the site and it looks like she’s setting up an online store for prints and the like soon.

My introduction to Futura came via Frankie Goes To Hollywood, though it’s unlikely I had any concept about typefaces at the time. All the Pleasuredome-era Frankie releases were typeset with various weights of Futura by in-house designers XLZTT. Journalist Paul Morley used to write all the funny/strange liner notes on the Frankie sleeves, mostly set in Futura Book. It was a fitting typeface to use: I found it to be clean, modern, yet creepy and whimsical, especially when used with words or short phrases in quotation marks, in all lower case. This was Frankie’s font, and it subtly defined their early image, other than the famous Katharine Hamnett-ripoff “Frankie Say Relax” shirts (designed by Morley). Strangely enough, Frankie’s second album, Liverpool, flopped (I blame its use of Helvetica).

Futura bold became part of the early Sub Pop template for their 7″ singles, and for a few years was widely seen on designs by Vaughan Oliver (particularly on sleeves for the Pixies, Throwing Muses, Lush, Pale Saints, and the first All About Eve EP). Lately it’s been seen on sleeves for Broken Bells and the Pet Shop Boys. Outside the music realm, Volkswagen uses it, and IKEA famously used to employ a custom version, before their controversial switch to Verdana–a font that I’d say is practically devoid of all the soul Futura has. Yes, good typefaces have soul.

To close, here’s a gallery of Futura applications.

At the time of that release, Morr Music’s roster was pretty incestuous and their design was single-handedly masterminded by Human Empire, the Hamburg-based design firm headed by Jan Kruse. One of the things I loved about the label was the consistent quality of the design – Human Empire’s covers were always playful and minimal and often contrasted with the melancholia on the discs within.

At some point in the last few years (I haven’t followed Morr’s progression that closely), Julia Guther has started doing many of the sleeves for Morr releases and has managed to maintain the same feel as the earlier work while adding a new dimension or two. Her work often seems to incorporate paper models and 3D typography to remarkable effect. I’m still discovering her work, so I can’t speak with much authority, but I have become a huge admirer. (continued after image)

Among other things, she designed the Sendak-esque “Still Night, Still Light,” for Au Revoir Simone, which is really stunning if you’ve seen the 10″ vinyl pressing. My favorite of her work so far, though, is the layout for the recent Bobby And Blum release, “Everybody Loves Bobby And Blumm.”

- Ryan

In the record store’s heyday, I used to love browsing singles, considering how the artwork related to the albums that spawned them. And this was regardless of whether I liked the band or not. In this age of a-la-carte song downloading, an album having actual singles with “b-sides” isn’t nearly as common as it used to be, and thus, less artwork variants.

The biggest influence on my choosing graphic design as my discipline, Malcolm Garrett, was one of the masters of design continuity. His artwork for the first two Duran Duran albums had excellent consistency with their singles. The “stop gap” single that appeared between the two albums was “My Own Way” (which appears drastically different on the following album, Rio), and that sleeve design also stood on its own. Incidentally, it was the only single to feature Peter Saville as a co-designer. (continued below image)

As the designer hired to the series of releases and ephemera for Stripmall Architecture’s Feathersongs For Factory Girls album, I had been confronted with an opportunity to explore the concept of continuity in design. The “key art” from the album is an illustration by Dallas-based artist Jody Pham. At first, for the “Radium Girls” promo CD single art, I cropped out a piece of the smoke plume to suggest a girl’s hair worn up. As this CD preceded the album, it also worked as a visual teaser to the album art.

For the “Pripyat” single, part of that same plume now suggests a wave of water (though, I admit, that has nothing to do with the song). Other parts of the illustration have been used in various ads and posters. With Part II of the album still forthcoming, it’ll be interesting to see where the continuity goes.

- The Mystery Parade

Jakub over on the excellent ISO50 blog just posted about the music his mom would play when he was young and how it has stayed with him all these years later. It’s funny that I read it just a day after reading about the new OMD release coming out in September. OMD’s “Electricity” is one of the first songs I can remember hearing my dad play and liking when I was very young (it was released in May 1979 as Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain and I was a 5-year-old living in the Southern California suburbs). Since he could see that I liked it, he made sure from then on that I was always up-to-date with OMD – even going so far as trying to convince me years afterward that their later work was also brilliant.

I’m not sure what about their music I latched onto specifically, but I did stay a faithful fan for longer than was probably justified. I actually liked (and still do, from a distance) “Dazzle Ships,” their famous career-destroying experiment. It’s always been clear, though, that after 1984’s “Junk Culture” (if you’re a fan of superb vinyl pressings, check out the original UK pressing with the super-glossy Saville-designed sleeve and the extra one-sided 7″) things changed. They continued to be great songwriters, but things felt a lot less interesting as they adopted a sound that was more commercially acceptable.

Now, in 2010, the “classic” lineup has reunited, recorded a new album, and re-teamed with Peter Saville . Their website has me intrigued and Saville looks in top-form with his updated “vintage” OMD look. I look forward to hearing the actual album, though it’s been a long, long time since I have actively listened to their music regularly. Good luck to them, regardless. I certainly got a lot out of their music in my early days.

Also, if you only click on one thing from this post, make it the video below, which includes a typically perfect interview with Factory Records (or, if you dare) founder Tony Wilson (the Wilson interview starts at about the 4:33 mark).

Well, if anyone, music collectors do. As a former semi-obsessed music collector myself, I used to follow these catalogue numbers. It was Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s UK releases on ZTT Records that first got my attention. The label had a system that assigned every artist’s release to either “The Action Series” or “The Incidental Series“. Frankie’s most famous and notorious release, the “Relax” single, for example was assigned the number ZTAS1–the first in The Action Series. The 7″ single was 7ZTAS1, the regular 12″ single (there were a few different ones) was 12ZTAS1. Logical, right? Not quite. The “Relax” cassette single somehow got assigned the number CTIS102, suggesting it was the 102nd entry in The Incidental Series.

I later found out just how esoteric ZTT’s system was: even Claudia Brücken, singer of Propaganda, got a catalogue number for her unusual lips. A ZTT night of performances got a catalogue number. I gave up after a while and, apparently, so did ZTT–I checked in a few years after and found they had revised their system into something more logical. Factory Records, I learned later, also had a habit of adding non-releases to their catalogue (such as founder Tony Wilson’s coffin, Fac 501).

4AD Records‘ system included an esoteric mention of each release’s year in their numbers–this came in handy for fans in pinpointing what year the Pixies first came out. The mini-album Come On Pilgrim carries the number MAD 709: the “M” in MAD denotes mini-album, “AD” is presumably derived from the label name, and 709 means it’s the ninth release in 4AD’s seventh year, 1987. Obviously you’d have to know the label launched in 1980, but most of 4AD’s hardcore fans know that fact. Although I could, I’m not going to go into explaining the whole system.

I also realized that it was generally indie labels that had such catalogue systems, which makes sense since the indies tend to have much fewer releases than the majors (thus, more manageable). But even bands like Nine Inch Nails gave their releases unofficial catalogue numbers (the Halo series, in NIN’s case).

A good catalogue system helps fill in the gaps in your collection–kind of doubling as a subtle marketing tool, as it did for the aforementioned labels. Hey, why not?

A quick welcome to Max (aka The Mystery Parade) to the blog. Hopefully, Max will provide a little more knowledge and insight about the design side of things here. Apart from art directing the Feathersongs For Factory Girls release, Max has worked with us on some Halou merchandise items in the late nineties and produced the short films for our Music of This Mortal Coil show this past January, among other things.

The MC-4 looks rather clinical next to the synth, but the simple design of this line of Roland gear grabs me visually in a kind of seventies sci-fi way. It’s impractical with today’s technology but modular systems like this still appeal to me in a weird way. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, everything moved toward the ‘workstation’ where a few buttons made up the whole of the interface and a whole range of features lurked under the hood, accessible via a particular combination of key-presses (like the Yamaha SY77, a beast of a machine that I owned long ago and used on the first Halou album. A synthesizer with almost no charm, whatsoever). Here’s another, sexier, shot of the MC-4 showing off like a prop in a Kubrick film:

The combination of the sequencer and the MTR100 tape storage machine looks so sweet but I like the idea of cassettes much more than the reality that comes with using them. The MTR100 was probably no exception. I had my share of cassette storage devices (not to mention Walkmen) back in the day and I’m not missing them at all. Of course, I’d be willing to try out one of these setups for a weekend, just to be sure.

- Ryan

A few months ago, someone turned me onto ffffound. From what I understand, members are mostly designer types who collect images that they find across the web and put them up on the site. Then, people like me go on there and scroll around with their jaw on the floor. There’s a really wide range of aesthetics on display, including a lot of great typography, evocative stills, and unclassifiable – but interesting – work that should be seen.

I usually find myself surfing around on ffffound while watching the Daily Show before I fall asleep. If you haven’t already, give it a look. Are there any great sites you use similarly?

- Ryan