03 June 2009

DISCSTYLE

Speaking of books, how did people manage to drool over cool pictures of sexy records and CDs before websites like Hard Format? Well presumably they spent twenty quid on a big coffee-table tome like this...

"Discstyle" by Martin Pesch & Markus Weisbeck (Collins & Brown, 1999)

I assume it's long out of print, but I came across a copy in a charity shop this week for two quid. It's a luxurious thing, with a forward by Ian Anderson (Designers Republic), charting the design trends of electronic music graphics in the latter half of the nineties. Not enough time has elapsed for it to really exude a strong, pungent flava of the era, in fact much of the imagery on offer wouldn't look too out of place today. But it's a nice thing to have and will perhaps grow in collectibity in the coming years.







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7 comments:

  1. Colin11:34 PM

    I've not come across that book before, £2? I'm jealous! Cheapest Amazon has it is £11 from the States.

    Have you got the Sampler series by Intro/Adrian Shaughnessy? They're very nice too.

    Thanks for the Hard Format mention, any chance of adding the link?

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  2. N.E.7:27 AM

    i tried but the link wasn't working. but it is now!

    the first thing i thought when i saw the book was 'this is like a hard format version of Hard Format' lol!

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  3. N.E.7:43 AM

    oh and a friend informs me that there are second hand copies on Amazon.uk selling for over £100.

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  4. Composing7:26 PM

    Sad thing is there doesn't seem to have been much progress since then. What's new? What looks distinctly 2009 as opposed to 1999?

    Maybe it's because we're all listening to downloaded MP3s? Is record and CD sleeve design dead?

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  5. Colin10:59 PM

    Thanks for adding the link Gutter. Phil Jones, no I don't think music design is dead at all! Check Hard Format out... If that book was published in '99, it won't contain any of Raster Noton's best releases for instance.

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  6. I am not Kek-w12:09 AM

    "Is record and CD sleeve design dead?" And book covers too. It's the rise of Photoshop, etc: now everything looks the same as well as sounds the same; uses the same 'tasteful' palettes and fonts. Welcome to Planet Coffee-table.

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  7. Steady J11:15 PM

    Awesome book, treasured in my collection. Preceded by Techno-Style, also by Martin Pesch, in the same 12" format. Sits alongside my copy of Localizer 1.0, the WARP book, and The Dsigners Republic vs IDEA. All thoroughly recommended!

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