Hasta La Ideas

Virgin Records’ 40th birthday is being marked by an exhibition reminding us of the contribution it made not just to music but also to the visual culture of the past four decades

Virgin Records: 40 Years of Disruptions [The Exhibition!] is at Victoria House, London WC1 until October 29. It’s the culmination of a series of projects marking the anniversary led by creative studio This is Real Art and organised around the idea of Virgin as an agent of disruption: “No other label has had so many tabloid front covers,” says TiRA’s Adrian Shaughnessy. “Disruption is [Virgin’s] hallmark.”.

Earlier this year, TiRA designed a 40th anniversary version of Virgin’s famous logo (see our story here)

They then designed a commemorative book which told the label’s story through the decades

The exhibition is in the basement of an old insurance company in London’s Holborn. TiRA worked with architectural designers Parachute Design Collective on the show which uses scaffolding poles and boards to display key images which tell the label’s story.

A major part of the show is an audio-visual piece by Kelvin Brown, Chris Paul Daniels, Sam Meech and Lumen, which mixes snatches of Virgin tracks and music videos with BBC news footage and even recordings of Virgin shop staff. The piece plays throughout the gallery as visitors make their way from decade to decade.

Choice quotes about Virgin artists are pulled out on black and yellow posters. Much of the imagery is printed out on paper and hung off the structure with bulldog clips.

TiRA say they were keen to avoid the usual music show tactics of displaying lots of guitars in glass cases. There is some memorabilia on show however (and the odd guitar), a particular favourite being this PiL collection from their 1986 Album, er, album

And, a bit more up to date, two of DeadMau5’s heads

Virgin Records has become thoroughly absorbed into the mainstream music business now, of course and, unfortunately, the show’s content becomes perhaps a little less interesting the closer you get to the present (par for the course for the entire music industry you could say), but it’s still a fantastic show and a real tribute to the many designers, directors and assorted iconoclasts the label has worked with over the years.

Virgin Records: 40 Years of Disruptions [The Exhibition!] is at Victoria House, London WC1 until October 29, see virgin40.com

The November issue of CR includes a special feature on Virgin Records including interviews with photographer and designer Brian Cooke (who worked on all the Sex Pistols material) and video commissioner Carole Burton-Fairbrother. See our post here, or buy it from us here

A replica of the newsstand magazine that features briefly in John Carpenter’s 1988 film, They Live, is now available from two Swiss publishers. And readers don’t need special sunglasses to see ‘the truth’ contained within…

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Carpenter’s classic sci-fi film, everyedition and fold in Switzerland are publishing a replica edition of the magazine that the film’s protagonist Nada picks up while first realising he can – while wearing the sunglasses – ‘see’ through the gloss of consumer society and even the ‘aliens’ who control it.

The black-and-white view through the glasses is not a pretty one. Here’s the sequence where Nada looks at some innocuous-looking hoardings, flicks through said magazine and encounters a few of the extra-terrestrials. (Warning – contains various attempts to convey ‘astonishment’):

The newsstand as featured in They Live, viewed through the special sunglasses

Spread from This is Your God

They Live follows Nada as he uncovers how the ‘aliens’ have been controlling human society through mass media. Imagery from the Carpenter-penned story also famously inspired the artist Shepard Fairey to develop the “Obey” concept into an ongoing theme in his work.

Designed by Piero Glina, This is Your God is named after the slogan which appears on the dollar bills (which feature in the newsstand scene) when viewed with the sunglasses. According to the publishers, the replica edition makes use of the film version’s “iconic typography with all its flaws and special characteristics”.

*UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments below, Spanish magazine Belio had a similar idea in 2011 and also published a version of the They Live publication, which can be seen here on their site and is available as a PDF here.

Published alongside the everyedition/fold edition of the magazine, a second volume features images of the places where the billboard and signage slogans originate in the film.

This is Your God is available from everyedition and fold (from 27 CHF).

At 11.57pm each night this month, all the screens in New York’s Times Square simultaneously display a short film by graphic designer Andrew Sloat, creator of the latest Midnight Moment

The Midnight Moment project co-ordinates all the sign operators in Times Square “to display synchronized, cutting-edge creative content on electronic billboards and newspaper kiosks throughout Times Square every night”. The programme is run by the Times Square Advertising Coalition (TSAC) and Times Square Arts and is the successor to Times Square Moment: A Digital Gallery which began in May 2012 (more here).

For October’s Midnight Moment, the New York chapter of the  AIGA invited a select group of New York designers to submit videos. According to AIGA, Sloat’s video 1st Amendment (excerpts), shown above, “was ultimately chosen for its content, approach and distinctive execution”. Sloat’s film spells out excerpts from the US Constitutional First Amendment, reminding visitors of “Times Square’s strong identity as the nation’s ‘town square’,” AIGA say.

Sloat’s film in action. Photo: Ka-Man Tse for @TSqArts

“A place like Times Square exists because the rights of free speech and assembly are broadly defined and protected in America. Yet in an urban environment, these freedoms are also constantly negotiated. This twelve-channel video celebrates the simple words that make this globally-famous place possible,” Sloat said in a statement about the film which will play every night throughout October from 11:57pm to midnight.

The other films submitted for the competition can be seen on the AIGA/NY Vimeo page here.

Our favourites are:

2×4‘s mind-bending Eye Test

Keira Alexandra‘s love letter to the city, New York, I Love You

Billy Likes to Dance by Dress Code

And Open‘s People Service Announcements

Once, the future looked like this. The Human League’s Martyn Ware explains how night shifts as a computer operator helped him create the band’s first flyers

At this year’s AGI Open, Graphic Thought Facility’s Andrew Stevens delivered a talk on Letraset, the graphic and type system first launched in the 1960s. As part of the talk, he showed the first ever gig poster for The Human League, which was designed by band member Martyn Ware. The image sparked a wave of interest among the audience so we thought we’d ask Ware about the inspiration for the design.

In 1978, Ware was working nightshifts as a computer operator in Sheffield, “doing really boring things like payroll on a computer the size of a house. It was tedious, but it paid pretty well,” he says.

He had also formed a synth pop band, The Human League, with his friend and co-worker Ian Craig Marsh and school friend Philip Oakey. (Marsh and Ware had previously formed a synth band called The Future, but decided on a name change after their lead singer left and Oakey joined).

Keen to present their futuristic sound in a suitably futuristic way, they decided to create posters to promote their first gig using .matrix coding. “We were messing around with different ways of presenting our band to the public, and thought it would be fun to play with inputting info into the computers. I chatted up one of the punchcard girls and asked her to put in the letters for us,” he explains.

“We wanted it to look like something from a sci-fi film. Now of course, it looks retro but at the time, it was pretty futuristic. And there was something really lovely about the misalignment of the letters. I never went to art or design college, but it was something I’d always had a strong interest in” he adds.

Ware and Marsh had also experimented with .matrix coding when trying to promote the Future. “We sent out invites in the same style to a load of record companies, asking them to meet with us, and we got asked to 12 meetings in two days. It certainly got people’s attention,” he adds.

When The Human League signed to record label Virgin in 1979, Ware says the band kept control over and final sign-off on all album artwork and promotional visuals. But when the label’s art department misinterpreted the band’s brief for the cover of their first album, Reproduction (above), Ware says they were unable to organise a re-design before its release date.

“We said we wanted an image of a glass dance floor in a discotheque which people were dancing on and beneath this, a lit room full of babies. It was meant to look like a still from a film – like some kind of dystopian vision of the future – but it just looks like they’re treading on babies. We were quite upset but at that time, it was too late to change it.”

Graphic designer Malcolm Garrett designed the cover for their second album, Travelogue, which featured a shot of a man with a sled and a group of dogs in the snow – and no babies being stepped on. Ware and Garrett are now close friends and still work together on album art: Garrett designed the artwork for House of Illustrious (below), a 10 CD boxset released by Ware and Vince Clarke, and was awarded a D&AD pencil for his work.

“I’m still obsessed with the way bands are visually represented,” says Ware. “The mood you create with your writing and production can be destroyed with the wrong kind of artwork – like the weird abstract nonsense that record companies like to put on compilation and greatest hits albums. For most bands, and certainly The Human League, their look is an intrinsic part of who they are,” he adds.

To help ease you into the start of the new working week, here are eight great music videos that have come out in the last couple of weeks. So grab a cup of tea, sit back and pretend you’re engaging in some ‘research’…

First up is an animated number by Gero Doll for the track Fourth Way by Adelph, which features some stunning visuals.

We’re in more mainstream territory with this next vid, which is for the Dizzee Rascal track Something Really Bad (featuring Will.I.Am), but director Henry Schofield serves up some lovely projection-mapping effects alongside the obligatory dancing girls. Production company: Partizan.

Some simple but lovely animation in this video for China Rats track N.O.M.O.N.E.Y by director Richard Swarbrick. The film features the band made out of coins and some brilliant animated paintings too. Production company: Hotspur & Argyle.

Hoku Uchiyama and Adam Bolt are the directors of this hilarious promo for You’re On Fire by They Might Be Giants, which features yet more excellent animation.

Wire and Boardwalk Empire actor Michael K Williams stars in MGMT’s new video, for track Cool Song No. 2. The promo is directed by Isaiah Seret.

Director Diane Martel conjures up some B movie-style horror scenes in this video for Franz Ferdinand’s Evil Eye. Production company: Black Dog Films.

This slow-motion film by director Ben Strebel tells the story of a wedding gone wrong for the track Lovesong by Javeon. Production company: Somesuch & Co.

We finish this round-up with Floria Sigismondi’s promo for Lawrence Rothman track #1 All Time Low, which sees the singer trying to recover from a bad night out, and also battle his way out of a pink rubber tube. Make of it what you will. Production company: Black Dog Films.