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Vaughan Oliver’s Invitation to Decode

January 9, 2020 · 1 Comment

Vaughan Oliver - Pixies Cover Art

My first job was at a record shop (Camelot Music, a staple of ’80s shopping malls), and I enjoyed a generous employee discount. That offered the freedom to purchase records based on the cover art — if the cover’s cool, the music’s gotta be cool, right? — and a lot of those records would be released on the seminal British label 4AD. The enticing cover art was by 23 Envelope, the design team of Vaughan Oliver and photographer Nigel Grierson.

Years ago, I wrote about the power of cover art in a tribute to Factory Records boss Tony Wilson. There was a cool record shop in the beach town where my grandmother lived. It was next to the grocery store, so, while visiting my grandmother, I’d pop in to look at records when she’d go for groceries. I was 12 or 13 years old and recall seeing those early New Order records — Movement and Everything’s Gone Green — sitting in the mysterious bin labeled ‘imports.’ These records were strange, not like anything that I’d seen, and it was impossible to resist their vibe. It would be a couple more years until I heard these records, but the sound, the feeling, wasn’t that far off from the cover art’s first impressions. The designer was Peter Saville, often mentioned in influence alongside Vaughan Oliver, and it was like he was transmitting signals to me across the Atlantic.

That’s what remarkable cover art — or design in general — does to us. It’s an invitation to decode, revealing (or hinting at) the intention of the creator. Or, as Oliver told an interviewer, “[An album] cover should work as an entrance door that invites you to cross it.”

Clan of Xymox - cover art by Vaughan Oliver

It’s not a stretch to believe there would be a lot fewer graphic designers in the world if not for Vaughan Oliver and Peter Saville. I can’t think of a single designer friend of a specific age range that wasn’t significantly inspired by the outputs of 4AD and Factory. But it wasn’t only budding designers who received inspiration. There are also a lot more independent labels because of these designs. Or a lot more labels that approached everything they did as a representative package.

Oliver understood that the appeal he added to 4AD was emotional, that fans of the label picked up on common threads and identified a community. Oliver stated, “This was kind of branding before branding—and I generally don’t use the word branding—but it was creating a vibe that made you trust in something.” He continued:

I was always a bit wary of putting an identity on the label itself, but I wanted individual identities for the bands that were consistent. Then, with time, you would see a thread start to appear. There was a unity, but without a corporate branding stamp on it. It was very fluid. Eventually, it became an emotional response that people had with the work. Thirty years later, I’m talking to students who call it “emotional branding”—how people become emotionally involved in what we were doing. I’ve got clients who ask, “How can we have that now?” I say, “We don’t have that now. It builds with time; it also builds with the quality of the product.”

It’s a challenge to create this emotional community without the tangible effects of a physical totem. It’s not impossible — many well-crafted artist websites successfully transmit intention to potential fans. But basing an artist’s vibe on the limitations of a social media platform’s template or a thumbnail in a streaming app is a losing battle. The Guardian’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas said it well: “[Vaughan Oliver’s cover] design tells you that you’re about to go on a journey. With streaming, you’re suddenly teleported in without a map.”

Unlike Oliver, I’m not afraid to use the term ‘branding’ as long as I get to define how I use it. And I define branding, in music, as the promise an artist makes to her audience. That’s the vibe of trust that Oliver refers to above, and it’s essential. An artist or label that gains that trust, that cultivates a community, that repeatedly transmits a signal, becomes a cultural curator. An expectation grows in the listener, and this expectation is a necessary tension. What’s next? Will this label fulfill my expectations? How will this artist continue to reward her community of fans?

That’s how we felt about 4AD. The cover art, the music, the ambiguity allowing us to fill in our own interpretations — these worked together to build our tribe. If, circa 1985, I saw you pick up a Cocteau Twins album in the record store I’d strike up a conversation. We’re in the same club.

I’m sure that Vaughan Oliver, 23 Envelope, and label founder Ivo Watts-Russell partly knew what they were doing. But I also think they stumbled into a lot of this. The point here is that it’s not that difficult. It’s all about developing intention. Understand who you want to reach, as narrowly as possible, and create only for them. Cohesively apply that aesthetic to everything you deliver to the world.

Vaughan Oliver passed away in the final days of 2019. As I commented on Twitter, it’s a triumph to be remembered for a distinctive contribution to culture and style; one that’s identifiably his own as well as freely lent to others. Oliver transitioned to education in his last decade, and that’s fitting. Many of us in the music industry were his students. He taught us all a lot, and, in a more ephemeral digital age, these lessons now serve a higher purpose.

🔗→ Lost worlds of sex and magic: Vaughan Oliver’s album sleeves for 4AD
🔗→ Sight, touch, hearing: an interview with Vaughan Oliver
🔗→ Vaughan Oliver (Interview Magazine)
🔗→ Cover Star: Vaughan Oliver interview
🔗→ interview with graphic designer vaughan oliver

Filed Under: Featured, Musical Moments Tagged With: 23 Envelope, 4AD, Album Covers, Art, Branding, Camelot Music, Cocteau Twins, Design, Factory Records, Fandom, Ivo Watts-Russell, New Order, Peter Saville, Tony Wilson, Tribute, Vaughan Oliver

Tony Wilson's Esoteric Cabal

August 20, 2007 · 2 Comments

Tony Wilson of Factory Records

Well, I hope that 2007 doesn’t turn into the year when my heroes start all dropping off (just as this other Wilson recently did).

Tony Wilson. Yeah, he was certainly a bit influential in the way I (and many others) view the presentation of music and musical artists. His Factory Records label wrote the playbook on how to develop an eclectic, boutique-style record label and yet maintain a homogenized image that practically sold the label as an artist of its own. The plots, techniques, and excesses are legendary … perhaps the most famous being how the elaborate cover art to New Order‘s “Blue Monday” cost so much to manufacture that Factory actually lost money for each copy sold. And it is generally recognized as the biggest selling 12″ in history.

Within a remembrance in Momus’ blog (and highlighted in the Metafilter thread on Wilson’s passing) he states, regarding the “Blue Monday” debacle:

Sure, Blue Monday’s lozenge-cut sleeve cost so much to print that the label actually lost more money the more copies they printed. But even that isn’t bad business. It’s an investment in mystique, and a bold statement that lavish elegance counts more than profit. “Some make money, others make history,” is how Tony put it.

I suppose that’s what Wilson showed me … that the choice exists to go that commercial route and create ‘art’ by committee, thus improving chances towards an accelerated yet temporary monetary success. Or you can live for your art and let it envelope every part of your being, to where the message of the music or writing or whatever comes through in every aspect of what you do. The creative life. Being satisfied with solely making ‘history’, even if it’s exclusive of its own.

Here’s something interesting: I totally remember my first exposure to Factory Records. My grandmother used to live on the beach in Melbourne, Florida, and as a young ‘un I would stay with her two or more weeks out of every summer. In addition to the pleasures of being stationed mere yards from the ocean and in the vicinity of my ever-spoiling grandmother, I looked forward to these visits for two other reasons: the really amazing college radio station WFIT which completely ruled in the ’80s (and is now light commercial jazz or something else sinister) and a little hole in the wall record store called Play It Again. I would find myself at Play It Again at least a few times each visit and, though I would rarely have the money to buy something each time, I would spend a couple hours just looking through the racks at the cover art of the LPs.

Now, because at the time Melbourne was blessed with a great college radio station Play It Again had quite a healthy ‘import section’ (as we used to call it in those days). I was around twelve years old and oblivious to the cooler happenings in the British underground at the time (I was into new wave synth-pop that you’d hear on top 40 radio circa 1980) but I dug the ‘import section’ because the covers were cooler and a bit mysterious. And, wouldn’t you know, the only covers I remember seeing at the time were two odd Peter Saville designed LPs: New Order’s Movement and Everything’s Gone Green. It was probably a couple years until I’d actually even listen to New Order but for some reason, the striking starkness of these covers, the absence of band photos or information beyond what was absolutely necessary (song titles, producer name – Martin Hannett! – and label info) really hit me as if I were looking at a moon rock in those record racks. I remember thinking “New Order” was an ominous band name, and it was as if this wasn’t a record album but an invite to some esoteric cabal. I didn’t buy anything from the shop that day but those covers and the name New Order stuck in my head until a couple years later when I finally gave in and bought a vinyl copy of a new album called Power, Corruption, and Lies.

So I guess my point is that this was what Wilson pioneered: his modus operandi so infected everything he was a part of that even a twelve-year-old kid looking at an album cover in Melbourne Beach, Florida, could pick up on his intentions and be affected. Of course, he didn’t design the covers or produce the music but Wilson was the glue that put all of this together to fulfill a master plan. He put up with Martin Hannett’s legendary studio tantrums and Peter Saville’s constant missed deadlines because he knew the result was more important. Everything had to perfectly fit into the Factory paradigm and there was no budging. Wilson believed early on that, through this, he’d be one of the ‘others’ making history. That’s pretty groundbreaking and important and we’re all still trying to catch up. Thankfully he left behind one hell of a playbook for us to follow. (Now if only more labels today would follow it … but that’s a different rant entirely)

Here are some other related Tony Wilson links that you should check out:

– 24 Hour Party People … an utterly fantastic film by the prolific Michael Winterbottom chronicling Tony Wilson’s life during the heyday of Factory Records and The Hacienda. It was stated a few times in the Metafilter thread linked above that a good way to remember Wilson is to watch this movie. I added to that thread that I think an even better homage (after watching the film at least once, of course) is to watch the film with Tony Wilson’s commentary track playing. His thoughts on how he and his history is cinematically represented give you even more of a feel for the man then the wonderful film does.
– From Joy Division To New Order … an excellent but somewhat hard-to-find book that, despite the title, is mainly about the history of Tony Wilson and Factory Records. It’s written by a close friend of everyone involved so it’s filled with tons of insight and juicy tidbits.
– Paul Morley, who was there in many ways, pays tribute to Tony Wilson in the Guardian
– How Tony Wilson changed the face of pop culture in Slate
– The always interesting Bob Lefsetz on Tony Wilson
– Factory Communications Ltd. – A Chronology
– Melody Maker article on Factory Records at the New Music Seminar in 1990
– Factory Records Image Bank … the inspiring early Factory-related design work of Peter Saville.

(This post originally appeared on my Q-Burns Abstract Message blog.)

Filed Under: Musical Moments Tagged With: Blue Monday, Factory Records, Martin Hannett, Melbourne Beach, Metafilter, Momus, New Order, Tony Wilson, Tribute, WFIT

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8sided.blog is a digital zine about sound, culture, and what Andrew Weatherall once referred to as 'the punk rock dream'.

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