Visual Research - Studio Brief 01 - OUGD406

As I have chosen to design a cover for Underworld Born Slippy, I want to look deeper into the 90's culture of the time to enhance my development within this brief.

To begin with, I want to look at genres that were at the forefront of club culture within the 90's. Drum and Bass, Garage, Trance, House, all of which were huge influences on how things were designed and promoted at the time.


Drum and Bass

Throughout the mid 90's, D&B was without a doubt one of the most listened to electronic music of the time. With he likes of Goldie, The Prodigy and Aphex Twin all with chart-topping singles I think analysing these would help me get to grips with how this genre of electronic music was being promoted.

Goldie

As you can tell by this artwork, the 90's had some cheesy album covers.
It looks almost as if the person(s) who designed this used video effects to create the oval spheres. The reason of this I can assume is that the music it represents is quite distorted and disconnected, this break-beat style of D&B reflects the 90's as within a sense of change, people, clothes and attitudes changing. 
The logo in the centre of the image is intact a record label, Metalheadz.

The Prodigy

The Prodigy, the mainstream of 90's D&B. 
'Music for the jilted generation' - Refers back to Goldie's cover, it was for people who were moving forward with the times. The image used looks quite disturbed, which represents the music in the best possible way, the look of decomposing skin and a screaming face indicates that something is trying to break free, possibly out of the everyday norm of life in the 90's.

Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin is another 'disturbed' one. You can tell this just by looking at the cover, even by watching one of his video's, but that's another kettle of fish. It conveys a style of painting, merging traditional with not-so-traditional facial expressions.

Garage

Garage is a genre that was born through influences from D&B. It played a huge part of mainstream music culture through the late 90's and early 00's.

Sunship

A 90's garage legend. This quite post-modernist style of type layout somewhat represents the 2-step style of the music. Unusually, this artwork doesn't include a gradient, something of which I found so often within UK garage album artworks.

Zed Bias

Bias was, and still is a huge inspiration to many. Now producing house music, his sound is well known throughout the world as some of the best around.
This piece has a classic 90's feel to it, with the green streaks running through it, looks as if it is water with the hue altered. This could mean the music 'flows' and is smooth.

Club Asylum

Gradient galor. This typical vinyl label is what a hell of a lot of others looked like at this time. This is something I want to avoid as it isn't really my style and wouldn't go well with born slippy. This is because I'm looking for more of a regenerated feel to the sleeve rather than creating something that would resemble to time the track was released.

House

House was huge in the 90's, and still is to this day. It has played birth to all sorts of different sub-genres of music, this is why I have chosen to study this type of music into more detail as Born Slippy, which is technically a Trance track, is more commonly labelled as House.

Inner City

A classic. This track never goes out of date, it's a shame I can't say the same cover art.

The colours used in this alone scream 80's/early 90's, the blocky italic type used at the bottom is reflective of what was at the time, fashionable. I wish to bring Born Slippy to the future with my designs, although type cannot be used, the visuals used in this artwork are what to avoid.

Frankie Knuckles

The late Frankie Knuckles, a house legend.
This artwork is a huge expression of the type of music he produced. The collage of shapes in my opinion, resemble dancing, or 'cutting shapes' so to speak.

ATB

ATB are trance heavyweights. Huge in Ibiza in the 90's the artwork clearly reflects this. The sense of being on an island deserted from anything else, the only thing that matters is the music.

Faithless

My all time favourite band for many reasons. This single artwork resembles 'Why Go?' perfectly. It gives the listener an idea of what the song is about, with only your own mind in the way of your imagination, Faithless want you to break free from any restraints and connect to the music the way they want you to.


To conclude my findings of a diverse range of 90's album covers, I feel this has given me an insight of what it means for an album art to reflect what the music wants you to feel. I want to resemble Born Slippy in a what emotions it sparks when listening to it.