That's Cool But Can You Make It More Sh*t

DFA Records' art director Michael Vadino has seen much of his work displayed as part of That's Cool But Can You Make It A More Sh*t: a retrospective of the label's visual material in Australia. (The exhibition will eventually be travelling to London and, home city, New York.) It featured a selection of material including cover art, flyers, drawings, posters, photos and other promotional material. [You can see Jason Munn's LCD Soundsystem poster also displayed in the pic below.]

At a time when many are discussing the divorcing of music from its artwork as equating with its demise in the digital era, we have events like this that do much the same while actually championing the visual material.

There's an interview with Vadino at www.thevine.com.

Trevor Johnson

Now leading the design team at Creative Lynx, Trevor Johnson [who shouldn't be confused with Trevor Jackson] gained attention for his Hacienda flyers. The work was stylish and successfully communicated with the target audience yet, sadly, it really doesn't overlap with the specific music forms I'm dealing with. However, I am taking some inspiration from his approach. And the following quote from him has resonance:

“Fashion and music and graphics all interrelate…graphics are about the styling of information, so you learn your trade by putting information out to other people and interpretating that to other places. Clubs are important in graphics and cultural history”