Exploring Vinyl!

Vinyl records are analogue sound storage mediums consisting of a flat disc inscribed with modulated spiral grooves. These records replaced the gramophone cylinders and come in many different formats and deigns. The small 7" (45rpm) records usually have one track per side, but a 10/12" (45rpm) record can hold up to 10 and 15 minutes of music. Above is a picture of some of my mothers 7" records which I was looking at to get an idea of the appearance of Vinyl for designing my own for Smaller Than You. The beginning of Vinyl records were usually sold in a cardboard layout slip with a hole in the centre enabling people to see the record label and song track. Nowadays the medium 10" size are quite rare, so I didn't have any to look at.
These 4 small Vinyl's were my favourite out of my mother's collection. I really like the simplicity and design of 'The Pretenders', the vibrant retro look of 'TheWalker Bros- Classic Cuts', and the dramatic close up image of Dandy Livingstone.
The minimalist look of the presenters and colour scheme is very similar to The Specials, it creates duality and stand out a lot. I like the ying yang effect and how even the record itself plays with the same style. On the back it has the song listings for track A and B, and has little information anywhere else. I think this is effective and myself as a customer would buy this.
'The Walker Bros.-Classic Cuts' scheme also creates a kind of duality, there is a mirror images man and women dancing on either side of the front of the record. The colours of pink white and black create a retro effect and link with their American Pop group style. The back of it is very detailed with track listings on top of the same repeated image of the man and the women dancing, and the bottom half has another repeated image of a Phillips radio showing advertising. I like the choppy font of the main title, against the bold smaller font showing the other information. I think this retro look is eye-catching and humorous, but may not go with the genre of Ska and image of skateboarding.
The third above of Jane Birkin's vinyl is really effective. The repeated pattern on the phonogram image in bold blue red and white seem symbolic and creates a hypnotising effect. They look like mini dart boards and look good but don't fit with the Jane Birkin style or type of song.
The fourth on the picture is of Dandy Livingstone's 'Come Back Liza', although this is very cheesy the layout is simple and bold. The picture of him is an extreme close up and establishes the artist and his audience's needs, the image and his reggae genre. Dandy Livingstone was a Jamaican musician and producer as is known for his song "Rudy, A Message To You" covered later on by 'The Specials'. He was part of Ska Beat Records at one point in his music career, which is quite ironic as the genre I am studying is Ska. I think this layout is good as I want my audiences to know who there artist is and can establish the type of music from the appearance of the product. Because 'Smaller Than You' consists of 6 members it may be hard to accomplish a close up of them all on their album/viynl cover.


I also like the back of Meat Loaf’s 'Dead Ringer' Vinyl, as the picture on the back is effective showing him live in performance. This establishes Meatloaf and his genre and the dramatic close up gives the audience an image of him with his passion for music. These larger 33" LP vinyl’s above are significant in my research as the vinyl I am producing, although will be in the form of a single (45"), will have the qualities of the larger vinyl. The larger ones often opened up like books, and had the actual record in a slip on the right hand side. I want to accomplish this, but in a smaller side. This means my production will have a proper front cover, will open up to have a left image and a right image and behind the right image and the back of the vinyl the record will be held. Although this isn’t familiar with the 45" I think it will be effective for my production as it will enable me to add more information and images of the band.




I even found some really old Disney and Care Bears on vinyl which was quite humourous!
Many of the large Vinyl's have extra features, which made the whole product more appealing. On one of Stevie Wonder's packing the theme was nature and had many images of natural substances and the front had in brail spelt out it's title which really made a stronger relationship with him and his audience. Some of the Vinyl’s opened up like a book and had the lyrics, or extra background biographical information on the artist/band. I like the idea of it opening up and having either a poster or the song lyrics on the inside of the cover, an another slip with the actual record inside. The smaller 45" ones often have small booklets inside, like what you get with Albums these days, entailing song information and lyrics which was also a good idea.