Design Practice Blog
Saturday, May 21, 2016
OUGD603 / JOIN THE FUTURE
JOIN THE FUTURE – Britain’s Bass and Bleep
Revolution – 1988 - 92
Harry O’Brien
Jake Simmonds
Matt Anniss
Brief
-Deadlines
Draft: 23/05/16
Final: 10/06/16
Publish ready: ?
-Plan
A collation of
written and visual research is to be presented in a publication in which the
visual language is informed by adherence to content, production and
distribution for the 23rd May.
A book exploring
Bleep and Bass culture is to be exhibited in the end of year show; this will be
the final draft before the book can independently published.
A market-ready
product will be created with the hope of being sold in independent bookstores
around the country and online.
-Production
The production
of each publication will vary adhering to its context:
Research and
visual history product will be presented in a publication in order to present
the written content alongside imagery appropriately; the editorial design will
be a manifestation of our investigation.
The end of year
show will dictate a need for signage, a plinth and the possibility of an audial
interaction, extracts of interviews, bleep tracks and other audial
communications. The book itself will be more developed at this point, adhering
to the timescale agreed writer Matt Anniss.
The market-ready
product will require commercial considerations, such as ISBN, ethereal and
promotional material to be applied. A curation of material will be dictated to
be used in online promotion on third party platforms such as DAZED – promoting
the product.
-Intent
The intent of the
project, through written and visual research, is to document, explore and
promote Bleep and Bass culture; it’s influence upon contemporary music and to
reveal/discuss the genre, currently undocumented to such an extent.
The desire to
complete the project derived from interest in the genre, the contemporary
cultural relevance alongside a practice in editorial design and independent
publishing – as investigated in the context of practice module.
The origins of
Bleep music lay within West Yorkshire, Bradford and Sheffield – the hometown of
myself and Harry. An exploration of Bleep and Bass intends to inform, discuss
and pay homage to ‘Britain’s first Bass Revolution’ and does not strive for
commercial gain.
Research
-Context
An investigation
of Bleep and Bass culture 1988-92 sits within several broader topics. The genre
was influenced by the social, technological and political attributes of the
time.
-Previous visual
applications
Explorations of
Bleep can be found alongside discussions of WARP Records, The Designer’s
Republic, Synthesizers and local histories of Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield
however not to such an extent within print.
Articles
exploring the ‘Best 20 Bleep tracks’, ‘Bleep: The story of Britain's first bass
revolution’ and ‘Britain at Night’ do exist exploring the genre.
The visual
language of Bleep exists in artifacts such as the vinyl covers, promotional
rave material and recordings of the events. Just as the music does, influence
from Detroit can be seen in early design.
-Target Audience
The pleasure of
creating work you are interested in, is not only the satisfaction of merging
play and work but that the target audience is very similar to yourself – not
necessarily by age, gender or location but interests, creating work for people
like yourself.
The target
audience covers several different interests, primarily people with a keen
interest in the genre of music or more generally, electronic music – facebooks
groups such as the orignators (a group dedicated to electronic music in the
late 80’s and early 90’s with 6,200 members) make evident the vast market.
Due to the
content covering pop culture too; the influence of Bleep evident in
contemporary music and many musicians, now incredibly popular, being mentioned
and interviewed – many fanbases can be considered as audiences.
Aside from the
written content, the visual language and production attributes of the
market-ready product intend to capture a design orientated audience, similar to
ourselves that not only buy a book for it’s content but the visual application
of such content as well as material, packaging and extras such as posters,
flags and smaller printed objects.
-Statistics
Concept
-Initial Ideas
In order to
begin collating material to form the book, a writer would have to be found, my
own, Jake’s and Harry’s experience in writing would not be sufficient enough to
produce the book. This intention of collaborating with a writer would be a task
in itself, especially without the offer of payment.
The process of
sourcing a writer would begin with examining existing writings on the topic and
contacting the authors with the proposal of producing a book.
The most substantial
and in-depth writings on Bleep existed on Resident Advisor, a platform of
culture commented through an electronic music perspective; https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2349.
The 2014 article covered a brief history of Bleep; it’s conception, influence
upon pop music and notably, its lack of appreciation as the first Bass
revolution.
In the comments
section of a RA Bleep article, a discussion took place between the author, Matt
and many users complimenting the piece and extending the discussion. It became
apparent Matt was keen to carry on the discussion beyond the RA article;
‘For space reasons there was only so much I could
touch on in the piece, and there's a wealth of other material about the
origins, scene, how the records got made etc that I simply couldn't find space
for. It's all on file, though, and hopefully will see the light of day in some
shape or form.’
An insight into
Matt’s enthusiasm for the subject and the promising idea the content already
existed made the need for us to contact him inevitable.
Matt’s positive
and immediate reply to our email would start the project, a rough narrative was
sent and a skype meeting was organized to pitch our intent.
Our relationship
with Matt, as author and ourselves dictating design, production and collation
team would allow Matt, with a wealth of experience in the industry, to dictate
the content and narrative of the book. To find a music journalist willing to
partake in such an amount of work without payment reflected the enthusiasm,
many others and Matt have for the forgotten genre.
Professional Relationships – roles:
Matt Anniss:
Author
Editorial Direction
Editing
Kieran Walsh:
Project Management
Research
Editorial Design
Direction
Research
Harry O’Brien:
Research
Design
Direction
Jake Simmonds:
Research
Design
Direction
The relationship between ourselves as a
professional practice was initially agreed to an equal input covering research,
design and artworking. At the time of hand in this approach has become slightly
skewed, the attempt to work in equal amounts has proven difficult – be this to
prior commitments, work or exterior factors, the equality of time spent on the
project per member reflects so. It is notable to mention Matt Anniss can not be
faulted, the work, involvement and help he has provided as to this point has
succeeded all expectations and is most definitely a reflection of his
professionalism.
Although the extent of this inequality has
not been drastic, in a commercial manner it would be considered unprofessional.
The roles of each person, as initially planned, would now more similarly
reflect the strategy below;
Matt:
Editor
Research
Kieran:
Creative Director
Senior Designer
Harry:
Senior Designer
Senior Researcher
Content sourcer.
Jake:
Researcher
Designer
Visual Research
The visual language of Bleep would derive
from the records, flyers and printed material of the time - the attributes of
design that reflected the production, distribution and technology of the time.
Many items of visual research were already
owned by us collectively, this collation of visual research would also include
first hand research from;
Locations:
Sheffield Architectural Archive, Sheffield.
CRASH Records
Jumbo Records
Leeds Print Festival – Ian Anderson on Asian
influence for WARP.
People:
‘EDZY’ – DJ
Neil Landstumm – DJ
Winston Hazel – DJ
Matt’s existing archive of visual material.
Others:
Facebook group ‘ The Originators-
BLEEP/TECHNO/ACID/HOUSE’ – a joining of individuals interested in electronic
music culture around the 90’s.
Working with Matt’s existing content was
the greatest source of information – the extent of effort, sources and
enthusiasm included 30,000 words of transcribed interviews, recordings, images,
mixes and even, personal insights into the musicians who originated the sound.
This research would evidently go on to form the book, a presentation of Matt’s
written and our collation of visual manifested in a design informed by the
culture, history and future of Bleep and Bass.
Format:
The format of
the book would, as every publication does, inform the design.
The size of the
book would be considered in order to achieve strong readability, specifically regarding
the copy-heavy nature of the book. As experienced over the entirety of the
course, research through practice in regards to the format of editorial design
lead us to consider between ourselves;
we agreed A5 (148mm
x 210mm) would be too small, subsequently leading to more pages and therefore a
thicker book – considering the great amount of copy dictated by Matt, such a
format would result in numerous amounts of text heavy pages – the mergence of
imagery within the writing would too exaggerate the page numbers.
A4 (210mm x
297mm) would be too large. Decided due to a number of reasons, the formats
resemblance to the stereotypical magazine, the physicality of such a size and
the ergonomics of reading in A4 format dictates a lay-down book.
Consideration of
a format derived from a collective envision for the final product, the usability,
ergonomics of the book – dicatated by the context in which we envisage the
publication to be read, stored and sold.
A meeting
between a coffee table book and a un-intimidating read – easy reading as it
were. Similar to books we own and have purchased recently – SKINHEAD-AN ARCHIVE
& IN LOVING MEMORY OF WORK, both publications sit between A5 & A4 in a
comfortable size to not intrude as a heavy object nor intimidating (Page number
wise) to question to read.
This
consideration of formats would then lead us to most conventional size between
the two – B5 (176mm x 250mm). Disregarding common formats and choosing an
unconventional size would lead to the heightening of print costs due to it’s
unorthodox nature.
B5 grants the
ability to use a two-column grid comfortably at a readable point size while the
low-res nature of images (due to
photographic technology of the 90’s) fit’s at comfortable scale before becoming
incredibly pixelated.
Typography:
One of the
greatest communicators of context, typography pre-digital offered a time
signature to the creation of work. By using typography found in it’s original
context, the connotations of a font can be communicated, enhancing the visual
language to resemble the content.
The typographic
examples found upon the Bleep and Bass artifacts of the late 80’s and early
90’s embody the visual language of the time. Around the time desktop publishing
became a tool for the graphic designer, the emergence of digitally altered
typography flourished (as discussed in Dissertation – To what extent have
technologies influenced the publishing of printed cultural material) – this is
evident on some of the examples here.
The use of
hand-rendered typography reflects the DIY nature of both production of album
covers and the music itself (The first Bleep track was created in the bedroom
of a terrace house in Bradford), without financial backing from record labels
the production values of sleeves were to be created by hand as adhere to
financial pressure.
In conclusion,
to communicate Bleep’s history, present and future in anything but a visual
language similar to that of it’s original iteration would be satirical. The connotations found in the typography used
at the time reflect the social, political and technological context of the
music, a fitting match + v pretty.
Our use of
typography would intend to offer a resemblance to that found amongst the artifacts
yet offer more than mere imitation, a contemporary reiteration of Bleep’s
visual language was agreed upon. A visual language to appeal to the target
audience identified primarily, the ‘design crowd’ – who would hopefully
recognize the resemblance to the design around the 90’s yet welcome the
contemporary nature resemblance of current Graphic Design. In doing so, Bleep
as a genre would be offered to a contemporary audience, a re-birth almost, a
contemporary translation relevant today, as ever.
The bold, skewed
and stretched sans-serif typography used throughout Bleep’s visual history
could be reminiscent of the post-industrial context the genre sat within,
resembling and embodying the industrial nature through glyphs commonly
perceived as adjectives such as ‘strong’, ‘bold’ and ‘basic’.
The more
complex, post-desktop publishing attributes found within the ‘Network’, ‘OUTER
RYTHYM’ and ‘Biorythym’ typographic pieces here can be related to the
Postmodern influence upon the work of The Designer’s Republic, Ian Anderson’s
discussion at Leeds Print Festival covered the topic of their work for WARP.
The Postmodern approach found in some examples reflects the music, a new
electronic future, early digital fonts – post analogue, Postmodern.
Our use of
typography intends to capture this mergence of post-industrial ‘strong’
typography with the use of ATC Duel and a reflection of the early digital
technologies in ATC Harris – a monospaced semi-serif typeface. The use of
monospaced typography derives from it’s use within typewriters however were
also used in early computer due to limited graphic abilities. The form of
monospaced fonts complimented the simplicity of pixels.
The manipulation
of our chosen typographic styles was granted a certain freedom, due to the informed
selection the ability to edit was granted to achieve the contemporary nature we
desired; the typography clearly related to content yet the manipulation
proposed a contemporary iteration.
Image Layout:
As the general
design direction dictates, to present any attribute of the book in a modernist,
minimalist sense is not appropriate – the book should reflect the DIY nature of
the time.
This direction
manifested in image layout grants the ability to work with a sense of freedom.
To place images in an erratic manner reflects the genre of music and the intent
to reflect both the nostalgic and contemporary natures of design.
The imagery must
illustrate the copy it is placed near throughout the copy pages, this is to
vary with the chapters:
A visual
‘Bleepography’, a selection of images to communicate the visual language of the
music is to sit towards the end of the book.
10 Must Bleep
tracks demands the need for type and image, a framed image to illustrate facts
and further writing on the track.
Material:
In my
dissertation I investigated the future of independent print publishing, I
concluded the exaggeration of print’s ethereal attributes, unobtainable in the
digital world, such as stock, finish, cover and weight collate to create a
sense of worth.
This sense of
worth is then to be strived for with the variation of stock, the evident effort
into the curation of material and general finish. For the submission - a
collation of research – the decision made to print within a hardback cover
attempts to exaggerate this worth.
For the final
market-ready publication, a perfectly cloth-bound hardback, coloured quote-page
stock and gloss image stock are strived for. This exaggeration of the reading
experience will be complimented with printed extras such as posters, flags and
other related mediums.
Colour:
Bleep’s visual
history is full of vibrant colour, a reflection of Graphic Design of the time –
the bold colours compliment the typography while the contrast (found in the NOW
cover) reflect the futuristic nature, as too strived for in the typography.
A colour we
intend to avoid is purple, the signature of WARP records by tDR. The use of
such a colour clashed with our intentions of mere imitation.
The justification
of colour can proudly derive from aesthetic, to justify a colour because of
it’s previous use within Bleep’s visual language would be impossible, without
the use of purple – any colour could be used.
The use of pink
is preposed here yet the colour on the quote pages would be the stock – this
decision will derive from available coloured stocks when drafting the
market-ready product and then applied to cover digitally, as was the process
here.
Production:
·
Print = CMYK
·
Perfect bound = exporting single
pages with 3mm Bleed.
·
Clothbound hardback = 20mm
border of cover for wrap.
Commercial
considerations:
·
All images in the published
product must be clear of copyright.
·
All typographic elements must
be clear of copyright.
·
All contributors must credited.
·
Compromise on production costs
may be necessary:
Two variations
may be possible – cheaper version with less print attributes / more expensive
with fully desired print attributes and extras.
·
Extracted content should be
curated well in order to send to third party platforms to gain publicity.
A collation of
visual and written research has created a research document, the origin of a book
that is to have a soft launch at the end of year show with the intent of being
independently published.
The book’s
design has been informed by the visual history of Bleep and hopes to both, pay
homage to the genre and inspire a new wave of interest.
The project has
been a practice in research, professional collaboration and design/direction.
Self-initiated, this project reflects my aspirations for briefs in industry –
the mergence of visual language, cultural discussion and general interest.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
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