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Graphic Design and the Music Business

Brad Jaffe 

Academic Setting 

This unit will be used at John Adams Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is designed for use with seventh and eighth grade art students. The typical class size for a John Adam’s art class ranges from 24 to 30 students. Ability levels in a middle school art class vary considerably. Some students are quite talented; others less so. It is quite possible to have a mix of special education (including gifted students), regular education, and students with limited English skills working together in the same class.  

            John Adams, one of the oldest middle schools in Albuquerque, is part of the West Mesa Cluster. Enrollment for 2000-2001 was reported at 752 students. The students are predominately Hispanic (77%). Anglo (13%), African American (4.9%), and Native American (3.2%) students account for the remainder of the population. Nearly two thirds of the students at John Adams qualify for the free or reduced lunch program--the families that live in the surrounding neighborhood are not, generally speaking, affluent. John Adams has a higher than average number of special education students. Nearly twenty-five percent of the schools’ students participate in special education programs. Many of the schools’ students are also categorized as LEP (Limited English Proficient). 

Context and Background

Why teach a unit on design as it relates to works of music to middle school art students? A recent article in the Albuquerque Journal entitled, “Teens Live Their Lives to Music” points to an immediate answer--student engagement. Exposing students to the challenges faced by professional commercial artists and connecting it to a subject area that students are already interested in--music--has the potential to be both successful and memorable. By participating in a curriculum unit that requires the learner to design artwork for a specific work of music, the student will begin to learn about the rigors of commercial design. By working with the instructor and their peers on the implementation of their ideas, the student will develop “an understanding of the dynamics of the creative process” (NM Arts Content Standard #4). Commercial artists do not work in isolation and visually representing an entire album of music within the space of a single square is a very challenging task. By viewing a variety of sheet music, album, and CD cover designs, students will have the opportunity to “observe, discuss, analyze, and make critical judgments about artistic works” (NM Arts Content Standard #5). The technology of recording musical performances has changed enormously through the years: from 78 RPM recordings that contained barely four minutes of music to our present-day compact discs. These technological changes have in turn created new challenges for artists and designers. It is my belief that immersing students in “real world” tasks and challenges is essential, both to maintain a high level of student interest and to properly prepare them for the kinds of tasks they will face as adults working in a technological society. This curriculum unit will offer students the opportunity to develop and “demonstrate knowledge about the ways in which technology and invention have impacted artists and offered them new possibilities for expression” (NM Arts Content Standard #7).

            As described above, current New Mexico state content standards relating to the arts are woven throughout the above rationale for teaching this unit. Moreover, it is my belief that learning about art and the creative process can enhance learning throughout the entire middle school curriculum. Recent educational studies show that students who participate in art and music programs do better than their peers on standardized tests and in their core curriculum classwork.

Music Title Pages: 1470 to 1800

Long before there was a music “business,” with its attendant army of marketing and promotional personnel, there were designs made for works of music. The earliest of these were music title pages. Dating as far back as 1501, music title pages presented designers and printers with some of the same challenges faced by modern commercial artists; that is, how to visually represent a musical work.

            The majority of music published during the early years of music printing was sacred music for use in the church service. These books, placed on a lecturn, were large enough to be read by an entire group of singers. The sheer size of these publications challenged designers to fill the spaces with decorations (Fraenkel 25). Imaginative use was made of the visual elements of music--instruments, performers, and performances--producing title pages of great beauty. Typically, book titles produced during the Renaissance were purely decorative. The artwork bore little relation to the actual content of the book. Title page designers thus made use of the various motifs found in Renaissance book art; namely, elaborate scrollwork and arabesque patterns (Fraenkel 31). Other elements of music title page design were the use of grotesque motifs, such as fantastic combinations of humans and animals. These designs evolved to include groupings of animals, monsters, or devils engaged in various musical activities. Another recurring theme of music title page design was the practice of using an archway as a frame for the text of the title (Fraenkel 31). Some music title pages are valuable sources of historical information for those interested in the design and development of musical instruments; others depict the music-making of their period by showing the size, composition and arrangement of bands, orchestras, and choirs (Fraenkel 32).

Printing Techniques

Decorative title pages in this early period were produced by woodcut, a technique which had been perfected in the early sixteenth century (Fraenkel 23). Lettering was either part of the wood block itself, or set in type. For nearly one hundred years, the woodcut was  the exclusive means of title decoration. Its only serious rival was the fleuron, or printer’s flowers, developed in France. The fleuron was an arrangement of cast metal pieces of different shapes in patterns of endless variety. These patterns were used to form ornamental borders framing the typeset text of the title (Fraenkel 23). Once introduced in the mid-1600s, the technique of engraving quickly replaced the woodcut and the fleuron in decorative music title design and became the leading technique of the seventeenth century. Engraving was, in turn, replaced by the lithographic technique, which was patented in 1799. Lithography, which is a convenient and inexpensive method for printing music and titles, remains a popular choice of designers, artists and printers to this day.

Victorian Music Covers: 1820 to 1880

The idolatry which today’s pop stars inspire isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. The Victorians had a highly developed live entertainment industry. In the London area alone, there were over 500 music halls and the music covers which promoted this industry were an essential part of it (Spellman 12). The British music publishing industry used lithographed music covers in the same way that record sleeves are used today.  Most covers were for music performed in the home, by the family at musical gatherings, and thousands of pieces were written expressly for that purpose. The average price for a cover was 3 shillings, in today’s terms the equivalent of a pound. This indicates the prosperity of the Victorian music-publishing industry. It was, for instance, possible to sell 250,000 copies of a popular waltz, and the enormous revenue this generated enabled music publishers to spend generously on illustrations for their covers (Spellman 34). Work for music cover illustrators was plentiful, the artists were well paid--fees for the best artists’ work often reached 20 guineas, an enormous sum in those days--and there was little competition.

            From the 1820s onwards, lithography began to replace engravings for music illustration (Spellman 66). By 1850, the process of lithography was firmly established in England. The first music covers were printed with the title of the music on the front. Later, fancy border designs and engraved vignettes began to appear on many music sheets. As this art form developed so did the public demand for the work of the most talented music cover illustrators. Two artists who became popular were Alfred Concanen (1835-1886) and John Brandard (1812-1863). Music publishers actually advertised covers as having been drawn by these artists as they realized that this would boost sales (Spellman 30). Concanen and Brandard were both professionally trained artists from artistic families. Each artist made important contributions to the art of music-cover illustration and their best work compares favorably with the work of famous artists of the time. They also portray a true picture of life in Victorian London and elsewhere. No aspect of Victorian life was overlooked by the music cover illustrator: politics, the army and navy, opera, ballet, royalty, sport, animals, scenes from the cities and rural landscapes, patriotism, and the music hall were all represented in their work. The more covers that are seen, the more one realizes how wide was their coverage of Victorian-era England (Spellman 30).
            It is impossible to state with certainty the number of Victorian-era music covers produced, but it was definitely more than 80,000 (Spellman 58). Although tremendously popular--Queen Victoria herself was reputed to be so charmed by the covers that she had a small press installed in the palace to print covers for the royal children--they were not regarded as having any intrinsic value. Consequently, the bulk of these covers have disappeared forever.
            The history of graphic work for music in nineteenth century England is really the story of the skill of the artists who produced the artwork. There were no mechanical aids such as exist today and the most elaborate work was done by hand. And despite the general decline in the music publishing business, many British music publishers have proved to be extremely long-lived. Some of the firms operating 100 years ago are still viable today; for example, Chappell’s, Francis Bros. & Day, and Hopwood and Crew (Spellman 42).

American Sheet Music

The story of how popular music in America moved from rag to jazz to swing and ultimately to rock is illustrated in the history of sheet music covers. The roughly two and a half million popular songs that have been written and published in this country, are representative of both our musical and artistic tastes (Klamkin 6). When viewed from a historical perspective, American sheet music covers also tell us something about ourselves: how we lived, the dances we danced, the games we played, the way we spoke, the foods we ate, the clothes we wore, the wars we fought, the prejudices we held, and our failures and accomplishments.
            The sheet music publishing business today only exists as a very minor part of the recording industry, and it is extremely difficult to purchase new sheet music for popular tunes (Klamkin 5). However, the sheet music business in the first half of the 20th century was as important, relatively speaking, as the record industry is today. During the heyday of Tin Pan Alley, songs were printed and sold by the thousands.

The major difference between the two industries is that music publishers, unlike record companies who spend millions on promotional and advertising materials, were not willing to pay large amounts for the design of sheet music covers. Since each sheet sold for less than a dollar the printing and design costs had to be kept as low as possible (Klamkin 4). Designers were faced with the challenge of creating an appealing design that could be printed cheaply.

            It wasn’t until late in the eighteenth century that American popular songs began to be illustrated with lithographed covers (Klamkin 9). One of the first commercial printers to see the possible applications of lithography to sheet music publishing were William and John Pendleton of Boston (Klamkin 10). A young apprentice of theirs, Nathanial Currier, would also go on to become a lithographic designer of sheet music. Most of Currier’s sheet music covers date from the years 1835 to 1839 and these were produced during the time when Currier was in business for himself, before his now-famous partnership with Ives (Klamkin 10).

Although hundreds of thousands of pieces of sheet music were published during the first half of the nineteenth century, few have survived (Klamkin 3). Examples of the most artistic and illustrative covers, like the lithographs produced by Currier, are rare. In many cases only one or two examples of a particular lithograph may exist (Klamkin 3). Except for small groups of collectors, the decorative aspects of American sheet music have been largely overlooked.

            As the music publishing business progressed in the nineteenth century, printing processes were developed that were cheaper and easier to execute than hand lithography. Toward the end of the century photography supplanted hand designs, and often a combination of artist-designed covers and photography was used. By the end of the nineteenth century there were few song sheets published that utilized color or particularly good art work (Klamkin 11). Most publishers opted for black and white printing. This kept costs down and the music sold anyway so there was little incentive to seek out imaginative artists.

            One artist who had an influence on the design of sheet music covers after the turn of the century was Gene Buck. Buck’s posterlike color covers helped reverse the trend towards black-and-white, unimaginative covers and soon became the rage in the music publishing business (Klamkin 11). The music publishing company Remick hired Buck to design all the song covers the company published. He created over five thousand cover designs until he was afflicted with a case of temporary blindness and had to stop working for 8 months (Klamkin 11). After his recovery, Buck continued to design covers for other Tin Pan Alley companies. Ironically, Buck might not be remembered at all had he not gone on to become a successful lyricist and librettist with Flo Ziegfield’s Follies. At this time, the design of sheet music covers was thought to have little artistic importance. Remembered more for his lyrics than art, Buck was largely responsible for the many attractive and colorful covers printed in the early 1900s (Klamkin 12).

            It is obvious that most of the artists who earned a living designing covers for popular songs in the last century thought very little of their– work. Only a small amount of published sheet music had signed covers (Klamkin 4). If there is any identification at all it is usually by the art company for whom the artists worked. Thus, thousands of artistically interesting covers cannot be identified. The exceptions exist only where an artist was hired for a particular design and was known for his illustration in some other area of commercial art. Signed covers by well-known artists are a rarity (Klamkin 4).

            From an artistic point of view sheet music is unique in that it brings together three forms of art--music, lyrics, and illustration--in a manner where they are interdependent for the final success of the product. American sheet music covers have been our earliest and most consistent form of decorative packaging and encompass a wide range of artistic styles--from cartoon caricature to Art Deco to Cubism.

 

Three Sheets to the Wind: The Decline of the Sheet Music Business

It’s not easy to buy sheet music of popular songs these days. What happened to cause the decline of the sheet music business in America? The major event that changed the entire sheet music publishing business was the development of a kind of music that depended more on the performance than it did on the written score (Klamkin 190). When rock and roll became popular back in the mid-fifties the sheet music business was already fading. As Richard Crawford points out in his book, the phonograph record was replacing sheet music as the primary means of selling music directly to consumers (Crawford 675). Televisions and radios had taken the place of the parlor piano in the American home. And even if you had the sheet music to a song made popular by, say, Chuck Berry it didn’t sound the same when played at home.

            The demise of the sheet music business didn’t occur overnight. Sales continued, although at a rate greatly reduced from the earlier part of the 20th century.   Many important New York music publishers gave up the business during this period; other large publishers sold out to movie studios (Klamkin 190). With the new popularity of rock, country, and folk music, many successful performers developed their own independent recording companies. Some of the most successful performers also published their own music. “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley has the imprint Elvis Presley Music, Inc. While earlier Beatles’ songs were published by a subsidiary of Music Corporation of America, later tunes like “Penny Lane” were published by the Beatle-owned company, Maclen Music, Inc (Klamkin 191).   By the mid-1960s the pop music business had changed so dramatically that the old Tin Pan Alley promoters who had made a living promoting their company’s songs would no longer recognize it. It just didn’t pay to sell sheet music anymore.

 

The Birth of the Sleeve: Record Design in the 1940s and 1950s

It’s hard for today’s students to imagine a recording industry without the “hype”--the driving forces of advertising and marketing. But prior to 1940, that was exactly the case. Most recordings made before 1920 were available only as singles in paper sleeves with graphics that promoted the record company rather than the artist. By the 1920s classical records began to appear in album form, usually on four to six twelve inch 78 rpm discs bound in volumes with gold or silver spines emulating books, but still with no graphics promoting the music. Stores that only sold records were a rarity; typically, records were sold in appliance or music stores along with phonographs and sheet music. Because there was no visual enticement, records were placed on shelves in the back of the store or behind a sales counter. Customers would have to ask for a recording by name as they would a can of soup on the top shelf (Kohler 11).

            In 1940 the way that music was marketed and packaged took a dramatic turn with the release of an album on Columbia Records of four ten-inch 78s featuring the musical hits of Rodgers and Hart (Kohler 13). What made this album different was that it had cover art created especially for it by a young designer named Alex Steinweiss (Kohler 13). When Steinweiss was originally hired by Columbia records in 1939 as their first advertising and promotional designer, the company had no intention of spending money on individual artwork for album covers. Instead they planned to rely on the generic all-type covers with gold-lettered spines that had previously been the norm. Steinweiss was eventually able to overcome his company’s fear of rising production costs and his new covers were an instant success. Sales figures showed that sales for albums with the Steinweiss covers rose dramatically in comparison to the same albums released with plain covers. The popularity of Steinweiss’s work prompted Columbia to request cover art for all subsequent releases. At twenty-three, Steinweiss had single-handedly created a new medium in graphic design and forever changed the way recorded music was packaged and marketed (Kohler 13). Beginning as a one-man design department, the label soon allowed him to hire other talented designers as assistants. Within a year after the first Steinweiss covers appeared, their success was such that it forced the other major record labels, Victor and Decca, to follow suit and hire their own staff and freelance designers to handle the new volume of work. More than any other designer who followed, it was Alex Steinweiss who created the look of record packaging in the 1940s.

            Covers designed by Steinweiss show distinct design innovations that belong to the 1940s. The heavy use of nineteenth century type in a modern context, vertical stripes, the ever-present “shadow box,” and the use of surrealism, popularized by Dali’s dream sequence in Hitchcock’s 1944 film Spellbound, all became characteristic design elements of the decade. Other design elements popular with the new record designers were the harlequin diamond, amoebic shapes, and a preference for all lower-case lettering (Kohler 13). The look that Steinweiss created for his record label was inspired by his love for the great European poster artists of the 1920s and 1930s.  Steinweiss covers share similar qualities with the posters from this period: bold use of type, flat colors, and a central theme with stylized images. What further sets his style apart, especially from covers done in more recent years, is the absence in almost all his designs of a photograph of the recording artist. Instead Steinweiss used a stylized approach that combined musical and cultural elements to portray the music inside (Kohler 19).

Record Design in the 1950s

Another Steinweiss contribution to the marketing and design of records was the development of the industry standard jacket for the long playing record (LP). By 1950, the LP was the preferred format for recording works of music. Its advantages over the 78 rpm recordings were undeniable: the long-playing discs held over 20 minutes of music per side, while the 78 held only four minutes. The LP was pressed on lightweight vinyl and had superior musical fidelity over the heavy, breakable, shellac-based 78s. By 1950 the LP was clearly the popular choice for albums, and the 45 rpm disc the choice for popular singles (Kohler 15). Amazingly, however, the first LPs were sold in the same artless paper sleeves that Steinweiss had eliminated with his groundbreaking designs for 78 rpm recordings. Not only did these packages fail to promote the music, they did little to protect the finer grooves in the vinyl disc from damage in shipping. Steinweiss’s solution to this problem was the development of a thin board folded in half and bound with a paper coating (Kohler 21). His design became the familiar LP jacket that would be used for the next forty years until the LP’s demise in the 1980s.

            The commercial success of the LP in the 1950s was such that the major record labels no longer completely dominated the record market (Kohler 65). By 1955, hundreds of smaller “speciality” labels had taken a piece of the market, some very successfully. Verve, Prestige, Blue Note, and Bethlehem, among others were exclusively devoted to jazz; Vox and London to classical; Tico and Crescendo to Latin music, Atlantic and Mercury to pop and R&B; and Folkways to folk. The most creative cover graphics from this period were generally produced for these smaller companies. The jazz companies in particular utilized creative and adventurous designs. The 1950s were very much the decade of the jazz record cover and the best designers from this period included Reid Miles and Andy Warhol (Blue Note), Rudolph deHarak (Columbia), and Jim Flora (RCA Victor). These designers carried on the ideas pioneered by Steinweiss by developing highly stylized, instantly recognizable cover art that became trademarks for their labels (Kohler 65). Ironically, rock and roll, the musical form most associated with the 1950s, had little impact on album cover art. Most rock and roll releases first appeared as 45 rpm singles that were packaged in--you guessed it--unadorned paper sleeves. This practice would continue into the early 1960s before it eventually exploded in a psychedelic haze of new design concepts.

Album Design: 1960 to 1980

Most rock album designs from the early 1960s, despite our memories to the contrary, were not very artistic or interesting. The enormous popularity the Beatles had among females worldwide necessitated the use of photography to promote the non-musical charms of the many groups that followed in their wake: from the Rolling Stones to the Kinks to the Beach Boys. While a lot of great rock music was being produced in the early sixties, the album designs themselves didn’t come anywhere close to being as energetic or creative as the music. The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds is an example of a groundbreaking musical statement packaged in an entirely pedestrian fashion: the group is shown in a badly tilted photograph feeding animals at a petting zoo. The first rock group to elevate their album design, as well as their music, into the realm of art was the Beatles with their release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beatle’s Sgt. Pepper’s album took hundreds of hours of studio time to record, and the cover for the album took weeks to prepare. Based on an idea by Paul McCartney, the cover for Sgt. Pepper’s evolved to become a sculptural collage of an imaginary audience of celebrities, living and dead, standing behind The Beatles. The four members of the group were dressed in brightly colored satin band uniforms which managed to convey an air of both 1960s-era psychedelia and Victorian-style Englishness. The production was orchestrated by British artist Peter Blake, who was recommended to the Beatles by their friend and confidante Robert Fraser, and photographed by Michael Cooper (Thorgerson and Powell 130). The result was, according to well-known album designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, one of the finest albums ever produced, with probably the most memorable cover, too.

            In addition to its striking cover image, the packaging for Sgt. Pepper’s was memorable in other ways: it was the first album to feature printed lyrics on the sleeve, it was one of the first albums to have a gatefold cover (which opened up like a book), and it was the first album to have anything other than a plain paper inner sleeve to protect the vinyl recording--the first pressing of the album used a psychedelic sleeve designed by the Dutch art group The Fool. The album also came with a cardboard sheet featuring Sgt. Pepper “cut-outs.”

            The success of Sgt. Pepper’s as a musical work changed the way that rock bands would write, arrange, record, and listen to music; moreover, the brilliant creativity of its packaging changed the way that rock bands and their designers thought about their records as physical objects. After Sgt. Pepper’s, the packaging itself became an extension of the artist’s musical statement. Indeed, shortly after Sgt. Pepper’s was released, the second most important rock band in the world, The Rolling Stones, set out to produce a cover that would out-do The Beatles in the new competition to produce the most lavish, artistic, and expensive cover artwork yet made for a record album. 

            The Stones built their own bizarre set for the cover of Their Satanic Majesties Request. Hiring the same photographer who had done Sgt. Pepper’s, Michael Cooper, they utilized an elaborate 3-D camera to create an image that had both the illusion of movement and three-dimensional space. It was estimated that the photo session cost nearly 15,000 pounds--a tremendous amount of money in 1967 (Thorgerson and Powell 144). The plastic 3-D photo was hand-glued on to each album for its initial run in England and the United States. This proved to be so expensive that the photo was eventually printed directly on the cover with no 3-D effect (Thorgerson and Powell 144). While the music on Their Satanic Majesties Request was inferior to Sgt. Pepper’s, the album art itself was very nearly its equal and a new era in album design had commenced.

 

Special Packaging

Following the lead of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, successful rock bands and their designers began to experiment with new ways to create striking and artistic packaging for albums. In addition to the visual experience of looking at a record’s design, albums are also three-dimensional objects with their own tactile and physical qualities which can be explored and exploited by designers. In the late 1960s and early 1970s designers began to experiment with ways to alter the square, cardboard sleeve. This experimentation led to the “cutout”--records whose shape had been altered from the square shape invented by Alex Steinweiss in the 1950s. Records were released with circular shapes (The Small Faces Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake) and as parallelograms (Traffic’s The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys). Records were cut to make the shape resemble something else altogether: a cigarette lighter (The Wailers, Catch a Fire), a glass of whiskey (Rod Stewart’s Sing it Again, Rod), or an octopus in a jar of formaldryhyde (Gentle Giant’s Octopus).

            In addition to the cutout, albums were released with die-cut designs: small holes in the cardboard integral to the design of the album cover. Die-cut covers included Led Zeppelins Physical Graffiti, with the die-cuts serving as rows of windows, Humble Pie’s Thunderbox, which had a die-cut keyhole on the cover, and Led Zeppelin III which used a set of die-cut peepholes with a turning wheel mounted in the center so the viewer could change the images.

            Sometimes instead of changing the shape of the square LP, the designer would add something unusual to the package: Albums were released with mirrors glued to their covers (Uriah Heep’s Look at Yourself), with working zippers (the Andy Warhol-designed cover for The Rolling Stone’s Sticky Fingers), and with paper panties attached  (Alice Cooper’s School’s Out, which, for good measure, was also shaped to look like a much-abused school desk). All sorts of specially designed inserts--posters, postcards, pictures--were stuffed inside the record sleeve. Even the vinyl record itself wasn’t safe from the eye of the designer. The black vinyl record was replaced on some albums with different colored vinyl or with a picture of the recording artist. There is a version of The Beatles’ White Album that was released, naturally, on bone-white vinyl.

            Since rock music was generally regarded by the mid-1970s as a bonifide art form, rock stars sought out well-known artists and illustrators to create designs for them. The Cars used famed illustrator Alberto Vargas, creator of The Vargas Girl, for their album Candy-O (Thorgerson and Powell 38). The Rolling Stones and The Velvet Underground had covers designed by Andy Warhol. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer used a painting by Swiss artist H. R. Giger--best known for creating the monster in the science-fiction film Alien--for their album Brain Salad Surgery (Thorgerson and Powell 30). Big Brother & the Holding Company used underground artist Roger Crumb for their Cheap Thrills album art (Thorgerson and Powell 40). Some rock stars became album designers: Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan used their own paintings for some of their record covers.

            Many of the album designs from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s are more idiosyncratic than artistic. Still, album design had come a long way from the early 1960s with its ubiquitous, cheaply-executed photograph. Still, the best rock album designers from this period--Rick Griffen, Andy Warhol, Barney Bubbles, and Storm Thorgerson--will be remembered because their designs were able to visually capture something of the imagination, artistry and passion of the music they were representing; not because they came up with a way to make an record look like an snake-skin wallet.

 

The End of the Album

In the early 1980s a technological breakthrough in music recording technology was introduced--the compact disc. These small, five-inch aluminum disks held virtually twice the amount of musical information as their vinyl counterparts. The digital compact disk, decoded by a laser beam, is noiseless, virtually unbreakable, and doesn’t degrade with repeated playing as does a vinyl recording. The rapid popularity of the compact disc and the CD player brought about the swift demise of the 12-inch vinyl record. After dominating music stores for nearly 40 years, records were swept aside to make room for this newer, more popular technology. And, while a few dedicated audiophiles and connoisseurs of album design lament the passing of the vinyl LP and its large-scale covers, the CD and its minuscule packaging is obviously here to stay. The compact disc will no doubt reign until technological innovation makes its next advance, challenging designers to adapt yet again.
 

Implementation 

New Mexico State Content Standards for the Arts are taken from the State Department of Education web site at (http://sde.state.nm.us). 

Lesson 1: Graphic Design and the Music Business : An Overview

Duration: 1 Class period

Main New Mexico standards addressed:  4-B-1, 5-B-1 

Content Standard 4: Demonstrate an understanding of the dynamics of the creative process. B) Understand how the qualities and characteristics of various art, media, techniques, and processes influence the creative process to communicate experiences and ideas. 1) Discuss specific instances in which culture influences art. 

Content Standard 5: Observe, discuss, analyze, and make critical judgments about artistic works. B) Understand contemporary and historic meanings in specific artworks through cultural and aesthetic inquiry. 1) Demonstrate how history, art, and culture can influence each other in making and studying works of art. 

Lesson: Students will be given an overview of how artists have created designs for works of music throughout history. Students will view and discuss samples of music title pages, Victorian sheet music covers, American sheet music covers, record album art, and CDs. I want students to realize that designs made for musical works have been around for a long time. I will also point out that designs for music have changed as a result of technological advances in both art and music recording technology. Students will be told that they will be designing an original work of art for a record or CD cover and asked, as a brief homework assignment, to bring in samples of record or CD art from home that they like. The students’ samples, as they are brought into the classroom, will be copied so they can be looked at and shared by the other students and saved as part of a class “library” of materials that will relate to this ongoing assignment.

 

Lesson 2: What Does the Artwork Tell Us?

Duration: 1 or 2 Class Periods

Main New Mexico standards addressed: 4-B-3, 5-B-1 

Content Standard 4: Demonstrate an understanding of the dynamics of the creative process. B) Understand how the qualities and characteristics of various art, media, techniques, and processes influence the creative process to communicate experiences and ideas. 3) Discuss orally or in written form a personal reaction to at least three pieces of art in different media. 

Content Standard 5: Observe, discuss, analyze, and make critical judgments about artistic works. B) Understand contemporary and historic meanings in specific artworks through cultural and aesthetic inquiry. 1) Demonstrate how history, art, and culture can influence each other in making and studying works of art. 

Lesson: Students will work in small groups. Each group will be given copies of designs made for music over the years: a music title cover, a cover for a piece of sheet music, a record album, and a CD. Students will be asked to pay particular attention to each example. I’ll ask the students to organize the samples in what they believe is the proper chronological order. Students will be asked to evaluate each sample artwork and write down a minimum of 5 observations relating to each. Observations may focus on the technique used by the artist, on the historical content of the piece, or their feelings about the overall artistic worth of the sample. When the groups have completed writing down their observations, these will be compared and collated by the instructor as part of a whole-class discussion. The point of the lesson is that careful observation of a design can elicit insight into its historical context and the relative success or failure of the designer to effectively communicate his ideas. 

Lesson 3: Designing a CD Cover (Part I)

Duration: 1 Class Period

Main New Mexico standards addressed: 1-A-1, 5-A-1 

Content Standard 1: Learn and develop the essential skills and technical demands unique to dance, music, theater/drama, and visual arts. A) Explore art materials, techniques, qualities, characteristics, and processes; understand what makes them effective in solving specific art problems and how they are used to enhance life experiences and ideas. 1) Engage in problem-solving activities that apply the principles of art to the elements of art. 

Content Standard 5: Observe, discuss, analyze, and make critical judgments about artistic works.  A) Understand and distinguish multiple purposes and motivations for creating works of art. 1) Demonstrate the use of the elements of art to express moods and feelings in one’s own art and the art of others. 

Lesson: I’ll ask students at the beginning of the class to imagine they are designers who have been hired by a band or record company to design a CD cover. Where do they start? What steps do they think they need to take to embark on the project? The students ideas will be discussed and listed on the chalkboard. After our discussion, the students will be given a copy of the article “Designing a Cover” from the Storm Thorgenson and Aubrey Powell book 100 Best Album Covers. We will read the article together as a class. I want students to have some understanding of the record/CD design process as it operates in the real world. We’ll compare the students’ ideas about the record design process with the process that actually occurs in the real world.
 

Lesson 4: Designing a CD Cover (Part II)

Duration: 3 or 4 Class Periods

Main New Mexico standards addressed: 1-A-1, 2-B-1, 4-B-2, 5-A-1

Content Standard 1: Learn and develop the essential skills and technical demands unique to dance, music, theater/drama, and visual arts. A) Explore art materials, techniques, qualities, characteristics, and processes; understand what makes them effective in solving specific art problems and how they are used to enhance life experiences and ideas. 1) Engage in problem-solving activities that apply the principles of art to the elements of art. 

Content Standard 2: Use dance, music, theater/drama, and visual arts to express ideas. B) Use subjects, themes, and symbols when expressing ideas in art works. 1) Explore a variety of media sources for developing and conveying ideas, images, themes, symbols, and events through art.  

Content Standard 4: Demonstrate an understanding of the dynamics of the creative process. B) Understand how the qualities and characteristics of various art, media, techniques, and processes influence the creative process to communicate experiences and ideas. 2) Identify and describe the emotional connotations of the use and placement of design principles and elements in a particular piece of art. 

Content Standard 5: Observe, discuss, analyze, and make critical judgments about artistic works.  A) Understand and distinguish multiple purposes and motivations for creating works of art. 1) Demonstrate the use of the elements of art to express moods and feelings in one’s own art and the art of others. 

Lesson: We’ll begin by looking at some examples of successful and unsuccessful designs made for albums. I’ll ask the students to tell me what they think a record designer’s chief challenge is and what constitutes an effective design. Hopefully, our conversation will boil down to the following points: An effective design for a piece of music must: a) attract the viewer’s attention, b) effectively communicate something about the musical product, and c) be interesting enough to warrant appreciation upon repeated viewings. I will tell students that their assignment is to begin work on an original design for a real band. As a homework assignment, students will be asked to prepare a proposal for their art project. (The written proposal will be completed using a form prepared by the instructor.)  On their proposal, the student will be asked to select a band and write a one or two paragraph description of the band’s musical style, the titles of the band’s previous releases, and a personal description of the style of artwork used by the group on previous recordings. Does the band have a consistent style that they use for their designs or does the artwork change from one recording to the next? Students will be asked to turn in at least one rough sketch of their proposed art along with the written proposal. This lesson will extend for perhaps as long as four class periods as students work on their designs, with feedback given by the instructor as to the merits of their work. Since designers in the real world work under pressure of deadlines, a final due date for their artwork will be assigned. As soon as the student has an effective design they will begin to prepare their final artwork. They will be allowed to use any technique they are comfortable with--drawing, painting, pastel, collage, etc.--and will also be encouraged to make use of the class computer to generate typography that can be incorporated into their design.

 

Lesson 5: Discussing Our Work

Duration: 1 Class Period

Main New Mexico standards addressed: 5-A-1 

Content Standard 5: Observe, discuss, analyze, and make critical judgments about artistic works.  A) Understand and distinguish multiple purposes and motivations for creating works of art. 1) Demonstrate the use of the elements of art to express moods and feelings in one’s own art and the art of others. 

Lesson: On the day of the project deadline, the finished projects will be displayed and the class will participate in a discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of their designs. We will focus on each project’s effectiveness as a work of graphic art intended to help sell a product--not on whether we “like” or “dislike” the piece. Does the work get our attention? Does the artist communicate something interesting or creative about the music? Is the piece interesting? Grades for the finished projects will be assigned by the instructor using the rubric described at the end of this section.

 

Lesson 6: Designing for the Future (Part 1)

Duration: 1 Class Period

Main New Mexico standards addressed: 1-A-1, 7-A-2 

Content Standard 1: Learn and develop the essential skills and technical demands unique to dance, music, theater/drama, and visual arts. A) Explore art materials, techniques, qualities, characteristics, and processes; understand what makes them effective in solving specific art problems and how they are used to enhance life experiences and ideas. 1) Engage in problem-solving activities that apply the principles of art to the elements of art. 

Content Standard 7: Demonstrate knowledge about how technology and invention have historically influenced artists and offered new possibilities for expression. A) Use, review, and evaluate computers and other electronic media as tools for design and communication of ideas. 2) Incorporate the use of at least one piece of technology in creating an original work of art. 

Lesson: We will begin by discussing the impact of the compact disc on the vinyl record album. Afterwards, the students will be given a mock press release describing a new breakthrough in recording technology--the “stamp”--a new music recording media approximately the size of a postage stamp that holds as much digital information as a CD. Due to its small size, music “stamps” are inexpensive to produce and can be loaded and permanently stored inside a stamp player, doing away with the need for a separate CD storage area. According to the press release, the first “stamps” and “stamp players” will be available to consumers within 6 months. Students will again work in small groups. Their task will be to brainstorm the different challenges designers will face as they adapt to this new musical technology. How do you design artwork for something this tiny? How do you create packaging that can be displayed in a store? How do you satisfy a consumer’s need for something physical or tangible when they purchase a music “stamp”? If successful, what impact will the “stamp” have on existing products (CDs and CD players)?

 

Lesson 7: Designing for the Future (Part 2)

Duration: 1 or 2 Class Periods

Main New Mexico standards addressed: 1-A-1, 7-A-2 

Content Standard 1: Learn and develop the essential skills and technical demands unique to dance, music, theater/drama, and visual arts. A) Explore art materials, techniques, qualities, characteristics, and processes; understand what makes them effective in solving specific art problems and how they are used to enhance life experiences and ideas. 1) Engage in problem-solving activities that apply the principles of art to the elements of art. 

Content Standard 7: Demonstrate knowledge about how technology and invention have historically influenced artists and offered new possibilities for expression. A) Use, review, and evaluate computers and other electronic media as tools for design and communication of ideas. 2) Incorporate the use of at least one piece of technology in creating an original work of art. 

Lesson: Students will work in small design groups of 3 and 4 students. Their task will be to come up with a package design for the music “stamp” that was introduced in the previous class. Each group will be given a sample “stamp” representing a current band’s latest release. The most effective designs will successfully solve as many potential design problems as possible. Students will work on a mock-up of their design that they will present to the class. Different student solutions to this design problem will be shared and discussed with the entire class.
 

Assessment Plan/Rubric

The following rubric will be given to the students at the beginning of this unit and will be used by the instructor to assess each student’s work. 

Rubric 

Your grade for the CD cover design project will based on the following scale of 400 points. Grades will be assigned as follows: 

350 to 400 points = A

300 to 349 points = B

250 to 299 points = C

200 to 249 points = D

Below 200 points = F 

Points will assigned according to the following criteria: 

1) Participation: 50 points (Points for participation will be based on student contributions to class discussions, bringing in sample art, and preparedness for class.) 

2) Completed Design Proposal: 50 (Based on the written proposal for the artwork you will create.) 

3) Completed CD Cover design: 200 points (Your finished CD cover design. Outstanding designs = 200 points. Average and poorly executed designs will receive fewer points.) 

4) Group Work: 100 points (Based on your contribution to all group-based discussions and assignments throughout this project. Cleanup habits and cooperation will also be considered.) 

Documentation 

Bibliography

Fraenkel, Gottfried S. Decorative Music Title Pages, 201 Examples From 1500 to 1800. New             York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1968.

A collection of over 200 of the most artistic and interesting designs for music title pages produced between 1500 and 1800. An excellent source of historical and visual material, particularly for students of graphic arts.

Klamkin, Marian. Old Sheet Music: A Pictorial History. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc.,              1975. 

A visual history of American sheet music covers with an emphasis on the development of printed popular music in America, the performers who popularized the music, and the visual aspects of sheet music covers. 

Kohler, Eric. In the Groove: Vintage Record Graphics 1940-1960. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1999. 

A pictorial history of album art produced during the 1940s and 1950s. In the Groove is an excellent source of information about ground-breaking designers and illustrators like Alex Steinweiss, Jim Flora and Rudolph deHarak. 

Pearsall, Ronald. Victorian Sheet Music Covers. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1972.

A historical overview focusing on the art of Victorian sheet music covers. Numerous visual examples of some of the best--and worst--music cover designs produced during this period. This book also contains detailed information about the history and development of lithographic printing techniques in Victorian-era England. 

Shaughnessy, Adrian and Julian House (Editors). Art, Pop and Contemporary Music Graphics.               London: Laurence King Publishing, 2000. 

A sampling of recent album and CD covers that are considered to be on the cutting-edge of graphic design. 

Spellman, Doreen and Sidney. Victorian Music Covers. London: Evelyn, Adams & Mackay Ltd.,              1969.

Another overview of Victorian sheet music covers that pays particular attention to the works of Alfred Concanen and John Brandard. Victorian-era artists Brandard and Concanen are considered the greatest names in the design and execution of pictorial music covers. 

Thorgerson, Storm and Aubrey Powell. 100 Best Album Covers. New York, NY: A DK             
            Publishing Book, 1999. 

Album designers Storm Thorgerson’s and Aubrey Powell’s choices for the 100 greatest album cover designs of all time. Detailed annotations reveal the creative story behind the album designs, showing how each concept was brought to life. Each entry contains interviews with the photographers, designers, and recording artists who were involved with the creation of the artwork