another great submission that came in last week... Grave Mistake just released the 2nd EP from North Carolina based "Brain F≠" (no, i don't know how you are supposed to say it either). this record is the perfect mergence of my love for both a classic punk aesthetic and sensible modern design. at first glance the front cover almost reads like a traditional crust record with its' use of a high contrast photo of a factory, but mirroring the image and placing it off center brings a nice element of design to the composition. soak it in and then we can talk about the type...
ok, so aside from there being at least 4 different type faces used in this layout (sometimes all at once), there is also some interesting use of japanese characters thrown into selected areas and even some words spelled out in different languages. when i saw the front cover and how the band name and record name were displayed in rather different type styles, i didn't think much of it at first. then i flipped it over and my mind was blown....
this back cover is one seriously awesome panel!... 3 type faces, 2 languages, and a band photo that's seen one too many trips to the photocopier make for one beautiful layout! somebody knows what they are doing with these fonts, and there were no "happy accidents" here. i love those big bold song titles.... fucking brilliant! i mean, this is a very traditional looking punk layout, but it was handled and executed with great restraint.
the cover feels like 80 lb uncoated cover, folded not glued, not sure if it was offset printed or just digital photocopy. the inside panel is a lyric sheet and what appears to be a band photo of some other band? that's weird, but i like it.
the A and B labels are even more over the top with the type play than the back panel! here is where we see type face 4 (FOUR!) in the layout and it is doing some pretty interesting things....
everything on this label seems to intentionally be sized and ordered incorrectly (or maybe counter-intuitively is a better way to describe it), and look at the way "So Dim" was pushed off center from the rest of the type. all of these design decisions could have easily looked contrived or just in bad taste, but they really pulled this look off perfectly. i for one am very excited to see more from this band....
ha, just reviewed this myself. Alex from Grave Mistake sent me one. great stuff. do you have their other 7"? it's very similar to this. you'd probably love the labels on it. the tape is great too, maybe not really artistically but musically.
ReplyDeleteThe band in the Picture is Kuro from Japan.
ReplyDelete