Unofficial they may be, but lovely to behold. Note pointed use of original Olympic rings…

All designs by Alan Clarke.

Lovely new science-fiction book cover designs on Gollancz.

As see on Creative Review.

I wrote the following in response to the question ‘what is your favourite album cover and why?’, asked on The Designer’s Review of Books blog.

There are so many ways to relate to album covers – from dog-eared flat surfaces used for rolling joints to pristine heavyweight vinyl encased in protective sheaths. And what’s meant by an album cover nowadays anyway? Is it a collection of 78s or one of those wonderful Led Zep fantasies like Physical Graffiti and In Through The Out Door. Might it be one of the huge number of wonderfully imaginative CD cases that bands and designers have come up with for the last decade or two? In the not too distant future, will it even be an iPhone app?

One of my favourite covers is the first CD I wrote about on Hard Format, the website I set up with a friend more than 18 months ago. It’s The K&D Sessions by Kruder and Dorfmeister. I bought it for £1 in a sale at my local library. It’s not the greatest design or the greatest music, but what I love is that it’s passed through so many hands and given so much pleasure to so many people. The evidence is there for anyone to see: it’s recorded in the frayed edges, torn surfaces and library date stamps. That wear and tear symbolises the brilliance of popular music: everyone can own an artwork that is both mass-produced and an original. However Kruder and Dorfmeister aren’t my final choice.

I’m tempted to choose one of Susan Archie’s jawdroppingly wonderful designs for Revenant. I’m torn between Charley Patton’s Screamin’ and Hollerin’ The Blues and Albert Ayler’s Ghost Box. Both evoke their subjects with extensive notes, photographs and ephemera – handbills, cards, handwritten notes. I’ll confess something: when I caught sight of the dogwood flower in the Ghost Box, it literally brought tears to my eyes. I’d also love to choose Richard Skelton‘s hand-crafted designs or múm’s gorgeous Summer Make Good book or Faust’s Clear in its transparent record sleeve, but in my heart of hearts I know my favourite design.

It’s the cover of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, the one with the white motorway symbol on a bright blue background. It’s an absolutely iconic design. I first saw it at the tender age of 8, in 1974, when my dad brought it home. A lifelong classical music stalwart, Autobahn was his one concession to popular music and it had a profound effect on me. I listened to the 22 minute title track over and over again on headphones, loving the synthesized sound of the cars whooshing from one ear to the other, right through the middle of my head. The bridge that crosses the two white lines always seemed to symbolise my headphones listening in to the roar of traffic martialled into a modern-day symphony by Kraftwerk. I wish I had a photograph of the album itself. What makes my dad’s copy unique – like the Kruder and Dorfmeister CD I talked about before – are the two pieces of brown sticky tape affixed to the lower corners. I recently asked why they were there and Dad reminded me that he’d had to repair the sleeve after numerous borrowings in my teenage years. Over the years, me and my dad have had quite a difficult relationship, but Autobahn always seemed like something shared. That cover is the nearest thing to a family heirloom I’ve got.

Autobahn is fascinating because of its translation of the concept of travel into musical form. This transmission from one medium to another was not a new one, but the extent to which it reduced the distance between musical composition and referent was and remains striking. Its central motif isn’t a melody, but the sound of cars approaching and moving away from the listener. The cover perfectly encapsulates this by appropriating the motorway symbol and placing it so that it fills the cover from top to bottom. There is no end to the journey in graphic terms, it’s implied that the road continues outside the frame of the cover. Similarly the music ends with one more passing car rather than the sound, say, of an engine being turned off (Autobahn’s railway counterpart, Trans-Europe Express, ends with the sound of train brakes squealing). Typographically, the design is fascinating as well. The letters R, W, R, A, U, A and H in the title are escaping from their settings, literally tracing new roads, setting off for multiple destinations. At the same time they’re dancing – the W, U and H waving and punching the air and the Rs and As stretching their toes out. The letter forms presage the tremendous influence the group would have on dance music and on the musical world as a whole. Similarly, the icon-focused design was the approach the group would take in its latterday releases, except that they folded the four members into each one.

Autobahn represents an utterly brilliant synergy between music, concept and visual design. One last thing: there’s no designer credit on the Autobahn sleeve which at the same as being a bit criminal also seems fittingly utilitarian.

My previous phone was a four year old Nokia a friend gave me – it was small, light and did calls and texts fine… Three years ago I bought a secondhand Sony Clie PDA (just when Sony stopped making PDAs). At that time I was doing large numbers of music reviews and wanted a combined device to listen and write on. Turned out I had to buy third party software to do so and neither the stylus nor the built-in physical keyboard were particularly satisfying in use. I persisted for quite a while with it. The Clie did however have a memory stick reader and bluetooth so I could catch up on reading by transfering PDFs and text files I’d saved on my laptop.

The iPhone is a thing of wonder, but it’s also very much a version one product for the reasons detailed below. It may be that I’m mistaken in some of these observations, but I did purchase and download a copy of the David Pogue’s Missing Manual for iPhone to assist me in identifying some of the less obvious details (which it mostly failed to do).

Bad Stuff

• Lack of note syncing. You can write notes in Mail and on the iPhone but neither will update – only way is to email notes. Not the end of the world, but not great.
• Limited Mail functionality. I expected the iPhone to mirror my MacBook Pro’s (MBP) setup complete with rules and subfolders. Instead it places all emails under particular email accounts in no apparent order (though I’d guess it’s by date/time). That’s pretty annoying if you get 50+ emails (personal, business and mailing lists) in multiple accounts each day. As part of this I expected that if I deleted an email from my MBP it would not download later to the iPhone. It does and then I have to delete it there again. Speaking of deleting… it’s a huge pain because each email has to be individually erased with a two part gesture that doesn’t always work. Engadget however have seen v2 of the iPhone software is going to sort this – thank goodness!
• Safari bookmark syncing seems to be one way. I first began to note items I’ve seen in RSS feeds by emailing them to myself so I could access from the MBP. Each time I did this from Safari it would open up a new email which was too much hassle for more than a very small number of items. So I began to bookmark in Safari thinking that these would sync back to the MBP to view. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but the sync appears to be one way, from the MBP to the iPhone. Ouch. I’ve since discovered that starring newsfeed entries in Google Reader enables me to refer to them in Firefox and I’m fine with that solution.
• Safari has to reload pages if it’s quit to access another iPhone programme. This is annoying if I’m out of signal range as I can’t then access previously loaded content until I’m back in signal range. Some of us take the underground which makes this a significant issue.
• Safari quits fairly often. Accessing straightforward websites like muse-ings (which uses a standard blogger template) and Lovefilm results in repeated crashes to the point where I’ve given up visiting them outside of Google Reader.
• PDF functionality is almost non-existent. The only way to read PDFs is to email them to yourself. One advantage of a pocket-size multimedia device is the opportunity to catch up on reading while on the move (see above point). When switching to other applications in the middle of a PDF means returning to Mail then reopening the PDF and finding your place as it doesn’t otherwise remember it.
• No eBook functionality. I want to read books on my iPhone! Sending a short PDF by email to my phone is okay, but scrolling through anything longer like a short story or novel to find my place is so laborious it’s a non-starter. ‘Books‘ looks promising, but I don’t want to jailbreak my phone. As sites like The Burgomeister’s Books provide digital copies of Borges, Pynchon, Ballard and the like, I’d love to carry a mini reference library around with me. Currently not possible, but I’ll be buying the first decent application once it’s available. BTW don’t get me started on the likes of the lame Penguin implementation which demands installation of PC-only Microsoft Reader… Oh and there’s an interesting discussion of the iPhone as eBook reader on O’Reilly.
  Update: further investigation reveals Reader by (db)element, a free service that allows users to upload books, save and format them to read in the iPhone’s browser. The site enables users to resize text and, crucially, bookmark their place to return to later. The downside unfortunately remains that you have to have access to the net as the books are stored remotely – if you’re on the underground or out of network range you can’t read your books… Still, it’s a great little service

  

• No Flash. Yes, yes I know it’s a battery drain, but I want the option to be able to visit my photography galleries (built in Lightroom’s Flash format), Flickr, etc even if it does use up my battery more quickly.
• Wired syncing only. I don’t want to have to find my lead to sync with the MBP. Annoying.
• Headphones. Apart from the recessed socket for which I had to buy an adaptor for my Ultimate Ears super.fi 5EB (ahem) headphones, I do like the mic functionality on the headphones lead, but the quality of the sound for music reproduction is atrocious and thus makes them unusable. I wish there was a third party solution to combine mic with my other headphones.
  
  
  
  Update: found it at the Apple Store and bought one, manufacturer is Shure. Only downside is length of wiring, but I have deliciously powerful headphones and all the functionality of the original, crappy Apple iPhone ones.
• No copy and paste. Would be very useful in a number of places, particularly notes to enable reordering of to dos, etc.
• Some visual feedback annoying in current format. The iPhone provides very similar visual feedback to things like increasing and decreasing the volume. The problem is that the message is too large and takes slightly too long to fade away. Whilst it’s visible it obscures anything you’re trying to look at. Either make it smaller, put it to one side, make it more transparent or/and fade it more quickly.
• Waking. Why do I have to press a physical button and also slide to unlock? Surely the pressing of the button should suffice. I don’t see why this is a two step process.
• Connecting. I received my iPhone on a Sunday morning. I wasn’t able to register until Sunday evening because 02 were upgrading their servers. Disappointing. The next weekend we went to Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast. Although the hotel’s wireless connection provided trouble-free access, Edge and the phone connection were intermittent at best and frequently reported ‘no connection’. Same experience next weekend in Blakeney, north Norfolk. Occasionally when I’m at home (with wireless internet clearly available on the MB and MBP), my iPhone opts for Edge and I have to manually remind it that I’ve a network available via the Settings. Not a biggie, but mildly annoying.
• Camera. Is decent enough in good light. Shame there’s no video, but not a big deal. My main problem with the camera is the lack of a physical exposure button which makes taking many pictures difficult. Forget taking the standard ‘me and my friends’ shot as it’s virtually impossible. This could be easily solved by providing the countdown functionality afforded by Photobooth.
• Physical design. Is gorgeous, but as with so much Apple hardware, it’s easily damaged. Within 5 days of getting my iPhone I’d dropped it twice. I don’t consider myself to be an overly-clumsy soul, but the case is so smooth it very easily slips out of my fingers. It now has two small scratches on the glass and a small chip from the lip of the headphone socket :-( iPhone sleeve ordered and on its way… Update: sleeves proved too fugly. I’m now resigned to being very careful in handling it. I did, however, buy a screen cover which is virtually invisible, but does make the screen less prone to grease build-up.
• Little bits and bobs of badness:
  • Slideshow crashes after three images.
  • Maps has crashed a few times.
  • I’ve had to force reboot the whole iPhone four times so far and force quit some apps a number of times.
  • I’ve given up on trying to log into my LoveFilm account.
  • Data roaming should be easier to access.

Good stuff

• Films. Using the inestimable Handbrake I’ve ripped the two DVDs of Kraftwerk’s Minimum Maximum, Brothers Quays’ short films, Last Year at Marienbad, THX 1138, Ivan’s Childhood, The Conversation. They all look absolutely fantastic on the iPhone screen.
  
  
  
• Speakers. The sound quality is of course poor, but I get to act like a yoof and listen to Grime (currently really enjoying Durrty Goodz) on the top deck of the bus. Yes, I’m joking.
• Screen. It’s much easier to read that the MBP screen in bright daylight. Not sure why this is, but reading from it isn’t difficult. On the other hand trying to take pictures in bright light is difficult.
• iPod. Coverflow. Sigh… :-) Oh and I’ve just discovered a lovely new feature! I listen to a lot of instrumental music, but a minute ago I chose to listen to Kraftwerk’s The Mix. I tapped on the album cover and without any input from me it displayed the lyrics to the currently playing song (The Robots) as well as the progress bar. Very nice.
• Phone. A pleasure to use.
• Safari RSS reader is too basic. I tried continuing to use my current setup of browser-based Bloglines and Vienna (a good open source RSS reader) on the MBP. This didn’t really work satisfactorily. So I migrated to Google Reader and haven’t looked back – it’s a great application, particularly the ‘mark as read when scrolling past’ feature and Google’s ability to translate everything into mobile-friendly formatting. Speaking of which, while iPhone’s Safari is very impressive, I much prefer Google’s reformatted version for ease of use and ability to access content (and not be prey to style).
• iTunes Music Store. Suffice to say I’ve just bought my first album in mp3 download format (Benga’s Diary of an Afro Warrior). Very easy to use, pleasing ability to quickly listen to 30 second samples. I’ve used this version much more frequently than the one on my MBP already. Tip: the final Cabaret Voltaire (double) album is available at the moment for £4.93 – it’s called The Conversation and it’s brilliant. Update: the Benga album disappeared mysteriously from my iPhone, but the Apple Store were very helpful in restoring it. (Odd given that the default advice is if you haven’t backed it up you’ll have to repurchase…) I did realise, however, that iTMS MP3s are ripped at only 120kbps (AAC) which is rather below my 192kbps policy. That hasn’t stopped me downloading the odd rare thing like the Von Südenfed remixes from the band’s 12″s.
• Mobile internet. Once I’d sorted myself out with Google Reader (see above) I became an impressed, happy bunny. It’s very, very impressive.
• Ease of use. Okay it’s a cliche by now, but the interface is mostly an absolute pleasure and encourages use of the iPhone wherever possible.
• Maps. Lovely stuff, particularly in v1.5 allowing location, bookmarks, etc. I wish and think Google really should facilitate tight integration with public transport systems re providing directions not just for cars… I’ve bookmarked tfl.gov.uk, but it’s an extra few steps…

Things I’d like to see

Apart from addressing the issues referred to above

• A voice memo/general recording app would be great – three quick clicks (or perhaps one long click) on the headphone remote would trigger record, three more would cease recording. MP3 named by default with time and date and added to iPod in a playlist called ‘voice memo’.
• I’d LOVE to be able to play tunes off the iPhone into my stereo via my Airport Express (even if it proved a significant memory drain).
• I’d like to see my encrypted password app (Wallet) ported.
• eBook reader as referred to above.

Conclusion

For many of the above ‘bad reasons’ I can’t wait for June to arrive to start purchasing third party apps to address these issues. No wonder Apple released the SDK, I assume their in-house resources were insufficient to develop proper applications in these areas. v2 of the iPhone OS looks heavily weighted towards accessing the corporate market which isn’t of much interest to the likes of me. It might look like the bad stuff significantly outweighs the good stuff, but in fact I’m tremendously happy with my iPhone – it really is a gorgeous, brilliantly-conceived device and, for the most part, a pleasure to use. Lack of 3G hasn’t proved that big a deal, I mostly use the web via mobile access pages (Google Reader, Wikipedia’s search page, etc) and these are small-footprint portals which are generally quick to load.

Thank you Is :-) Oh and thank you Joski for giving me the small Nokia which provided me with so many years of reliable service!

These are fantastic designs. At time of writing I haven’t quite figured out whether they’re in print or are speculative designs. If the former, I’m definitively going to buy copies. I adore their elegant simplicity. The designer is Nicole Paterson who writes as follows:

A series of book covers and interior spreads, a contemporary take on Dante’s classic poems. I wanted to create a set of book covers that did not use images from the Bosch Hell painting, or any images of Dante and Virgil that are normally found on covers for the Divine Comedy.

I was inspired by Dante’s use of mathematics and architecture in describing Hell, Heaven and Purgatory. I employed simple geometric shapes and color to represent these places, while still keeping the design simple, and allowing the reader to use their imagination when reading these vivid poems.

Her Flickr-based portolio.
Via the Creative Review blog.

I’m in the mode for heavy music, fuelled in part by my recent acquisition of a pair of Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 extended bass headphones (or personal monitors as they like to call them, heh heh). Listening to them is at first like walking into a bass-heavy club. My trusty Shure E3Cs, part of which snapped off in my bag not so long ago, ouch, hence this purchase, failed on the dubstep test – some bass parts just weren’t there. Only downside of them are their size, they are a tad outlandishly large for ear-canal headphones and I might have hesitated if I’d physically seen them rather than ordering them online. Here’s my current heavy listening playlist:

• 2562 / A Made Up Sound – all the 12″s thus far available on one playlist. Can’t wait for the new Techno Dread/Enforcers 12 upcoming imminently and Boomkat’s mention of an album in the pipeline has this sucker hot with anticipation…
• Benga / Diary of an Afro Warrior – been loving this one since I bought it.
• Burial / Burial – ’nuff said, prefer this to the second by a country mile.
• John Coltrane / Live In Japan – roiling out there’ness from ’66.
• Krust / Decoded – what happened to Krust? This is a great 12″ offshoot from the patchily brilliant Coded Language.
• Miles Davis / On The Corner + Dark Magus – the heaviest bastards from the heaviest fucker of them all.
• Scorch Trio / Luggumt – leadweight power trio features Raoul Björkenheim, Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love. If those names don’t conjure a little thrill, you’re deaf or dead.
• Signal / Robotron – this is best when it’s deafening you.
• T++ / All the 12″s – Torsten Pröfrock is god. My playlist includes his characteristically brilliant remix of Shackleton’s Death Is Not The End as well.
• Terje Isungset / Iceman Is – ice is the new metal. Or something.
• Various / … Compiled – Chain Reaction compilation, fairly rare, very heavy.
• Von Südenfed / Tromatic Reflexxions – played this to death, forgot about it, now resurrected it. Wish I could source the remixes, would love to hear ‘em, would pay to download them. Update: just spotted that they’re available on iTMS :-)

“Discarded”. How can that be? This is the final part of the out of print four volume set. Not as cheap as the others, but an ongoing delight.

I pride myself upon being slow on the uptake, bringing up the rear, last to catch on. As the uber-bloggers (Blissblog, k-punk) move away from their focus upon hauntology, I start to pay attention. In truth, I’d downloaded a couple of Belbury Poly albums a few months back and they’d sat mostly ignored in iTunes. When I did play them, I found them almost painfully self-conscious, overloaded with all those signifiers that so enthused the aforementioned writers. However, as I’ve become more puzzled with my life I’ve begun listening to some different music.

Belbury Poly gradually knitted into some kind of sense, so I finally opted to buy three Ghost Box albums to investigate further. (Note to RIAA/the music industry: I never would have made these purchases if I hadn’t had the opportunity to listen at length before buying.) I’m not going to comment on the music here, but the packaging. I ordered the CDs via the Ghost Box website and had only seen the booklets reproduced in The Wire. They’re gorgeous pieces of design: self-conscious and resonant in equal parts, courtesy of the hugely talented Julian House who’s done so much wonderful work for Intro:

I hadn’t seen the physical packaging before, but 110% expected to receive three covetable card digipaks. Imagine my disappointment when, upon opening the bubble-wrapped envelope, I found three standard plastic jewel cases:

When stacked together, as above, there’s some suggestion of a newly minted ’60s modernist housing project. But mostly the inability for this packaging to age more or less gracefully, unlike the music it contains which is so deliberately refracted through the prism of time, is a major let-down. Even the paper stock of the booklets is, to my mind, too glossy for its purpose. I wonder whether initial runs of these albums did come in digipak form.

The latest in a very occasional series of lovely things (predecessor to this post was the Max Bill Chronoscope). The subject – and particularly the title – of this wartime novel reminds me of the line in John Foxx/Ultravox’s Hiroshima Mon Amour: “Riding inter-city trains/Dressed in European grey.” The Aerodrome is a detailed dystopian fable that, although slow to unfold, is worth searching out for those interested in the likes of 1984, In The Second Year and Brave New World.

Dear Reader, I’m off on my hols for a week, but if you fancy looking at something else I’m involved in, please visit Hard Format, a website I set up with 300dpi that’s now almost a month old. We set it up to celebrate our love of brilliant music-related design. The aim isn’t to repeat what’s already covered in all those coffee table best album cover of all time books, but rather a personal selection of mostly recent designs. If you’ve any ideas, do let us know as we’re open to suggestions!