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 23^rd 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.