Some more motion graphics goodness today, following on from last weeks feast of animated wonders. Just like the video for 'DVNO' by Justice pays homage to vintage eighties logos, the video for Dan Black's 'Symphonies', acts as a tribute to classic title sequences from films.
The video sees Dan Black jumping, driving and falling through every classic style of title design since the 1930s, with clear references to iconic opening sequences from films such as Se7en and Goldfinger, and of course the legendary title designer Saul Bass, amongst many others.
The video was created by Parisian design duo Chic & Artistic, and I found an interesting interview with them over on The Art of the Title Sequence blog. It's clear that a lot of effort went in to recreating the look and feel of each era of design, and the attention to detail is superb.
"We viewed a large number of title sequences by genre and time period. We needed to reproduce the image and original graphic design through lighting, film grain, color grading, costume design, accessories, as well as typographical choices."
The typography in particular I feel is spot on, and adds a lot of credibility to these well executed parodies. The result is a captivating music video combined with a nice slice of nostalgia, which should make interesting viewing for film fans as well as music fans. It's good to see that some music videos still try to achieve something interesting and unique, rather than simply giving us three and a half minutes worth of scantily clad dancers.
When you go to a music festival, you don't usually expect to end up attending an award winning short-film festival as well. However, that's exactly what happened to me this summer when I went to The Big Chill festival, hidden away in the hills amongst the lovely Malvern countryside. It is common for music festivals to have a cinema tent of some sort, but they usually just show a selection of the latest blockbusters; the kind of films that will keep the masses entertained, just in case several hundred bands, a handful of top comedians and a fairground (not to mention gallons upon gallons of alcohol) isn't enough to keep them occupied for a whole weekend.
At The Big Chill however, I was surprised, (not to mention delighted), to see that Onedotzero's 'Adventures in Motion' film festival was on the lineup. For anyone who is not already aware of Onedotzero (pronounced '1 dot 0'), you should be. They showcase and celebrate the best contemporary moving image work and encourage innovation across all forms of film and animation. Their annual film festival now tours the world, and this summer they brought it to a couple of music festivals for the first time.
At The Big Chill they showcased about a dozen different films, most of them being innovative music videos of one sort or another. All of the films were interesting to watch, and they kept the audience captivated for a good 80 minutes, but I've picked out a few that really stood out for me:
This first film, by Chris Milk, tells the story of a broken heart, which yes, has indeed been done countless times before, but this music video offers a rather unconventional take on the scenario. The clichéd 'ripping ones heart out' visual has been taken as a starting point and turned into something completely unexpected, and darkly humorous too. I can't quite decide if I find the film brilliant or just a little bit disturbing - decide for yourselves.
This film is brilliant. It's been knocking around on numerous music and design blogs for a while now, but if you've not seen it yet, I recommend you check it out. If you like typography or logos, this video should tick all the boxes. It's an "Insane collage of (seemingly) vintage eighties logos" designed by So Me and Machine Molle. And for the hardcore typography geeks out there, over at FontFeed they have identified all the typefaces used in the video.
Next up is Bjork's animated video for Wanderlust which you can view in 3D if you've got the necessary red/blue spectacles, or just in plain old two dimensions, over at the Encyclopedia Pictura website. The music video took nine months from conception to completion, and uses a style of animation unlike anything I've ever seen before. There's an interesting 'Making of' video with director Damijan Saccio over at Vimeo if you're interested in finding out more.
Finally, one of the films I enjoyed the most was Albert's Speech, a short comedy produced in conjunction with Onedotzero and commissioned by the BBC Film Network. It tells the tale of Albert, a nervous introvert, who is desperately trying to avoid having to stand up in front of 100 people to deliver the best man's speech at his friends wedding. The acting is combined with short segments of animation which support the story and provide an insight into Albert's thoughts, and they showcase a range of different styles from talented animators such as Jan Urbanowski, Mark Hough, Trunk and Peepshow. The film is 15 minutes long, but if you've got some time to spare, you can watch Albert's Speech here.
Onedotzero have also just launched their 2009/10 Adventures in Motion tour at the BFI Southbank in London. I haven't been able to catch any of the films yet, but one which looks particularly interesting is Logorama by French animation team h5. Apparently, "Logorama features spectacular car chases, an intense hostage crisis and wild rampaging animals: created exclusively from hundreds of infamous brand logos". Intriguing.
As far as I can tell, every classical music album comes with terrible packaging design as standard. A mix of horrendous typography, accompanied by generic photographs of instruments, composers, or in the worst cases, both. These are some of the most amazing, most celebrated pieces of music ever made, so why don't they deserve good design?
Four equally dire Mozart covers
Don't even get me started on the many problems I have with this album cover:
Mozart for your baby. Indeed.
Perhaps it's simply that the record companies want to keep the album art 'refined' and 'sophisticated' in order to differentiate it from the other music found on the shelves of record shops, or increasingly on the pages of internet shops like Amazon. Just glancing at the covers, you can instantly tell that these are classical albums; they're certainly not rock, dance, pop music, or anything else. However, album covers that are trying to look too sophisticated and pretentious run the risk of deterring new listeners. I don't know anybody my own age would even consider buying a classical album, yet I'm willing to bet that it's not because of the music itself, it's because the packaging makes it look like you're only supposed to purchase it if you're past retirement age.
Four Chopin album covers
Classical compilation albums are no better in terms of design
Upon seeing all these vexatious examples of bad design, I soon found myself eagerly trying to search out some examples of good classical album covers. I found a very interesting Flickr set full of classical music albums, all on vinyl, from the 1950s. The covers are full of bold colours and shapes, and some delightful illustrations which really sum up the style of design at the time. It's very far removed from the kind of illustrations we are used to seeing on album covers today.
Vinyl covers from the 50s
So if classical albums came with good design in the 50s, at what point did it all start to go wrong? I took Gustav Holst's 'The Planets' as an example, and started looking at how the album covers have changed over the last half a century.
1950s
1960s
1970s
1990s
2000s
In my opinion the 50s is still the best example, but the one that intrigues me the most is the one from the 70s. Even if it's not a great album cover, it's great to see at least one example that steers clear of the all too obvious pictures of planets, and instead tries to approach the subject of outer-space and otherworldliness from a different angle.
Finally, I did manage to find one example of a classical music album that I thought had a great design. Die Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods), part of Wagner's opera, which culminates with the apocalyptical ending of the earth by raging fires and then floods, which wipe out both human civilization and the Gods. It would have been all too easy for the designer to simply place a picture of fire, destruction, Gods, or similar imagery on the front, but instead they went for a clean layout with a good visual hierarchy, a clever image, and some good typography to match (the only negative aspect is the record company's insistence on putting their logo in the corner). I'd like to see more covers like this, and fewer pictures of dusty old composers and their violins.
Die Götterdämmerung
For further examples of good, bad, and some slightly ridiculous classical album art, see these articles on the allmusic blog and the Too Many Tristans blog.
