Context of Practice: Special Request: Type + Vinyl Design

The majority of the rave flyers and posters I looked at made use of bold loud typefaces that had been manipulated in some way. Special Request's music on this record is powerful and bass driven made appropriate for big event spaces such as warehouses. I wanted to reflect this in the type used so opted for an industrial display font called Timmons NY.

Made slight manipulations to the letters by sharpening up the corners and extending the cap height to make the type look more imposing.

The lettering has been given a bevelled effect to bring it off the 2D surface and make it pop out, this is type of skeuomorphism was fairly common on the posters and flyers from the early to mid 90s but have used it more subtly here to avoid and overly cliché aesthetic.

Initial mock-up of cover with label logos and records sub-title. Next stage is to experiment with type alongside other images and type for track names, creating a variety of possible compositions.

Taking imagery from 90s rave poster and flyer designs. The space/futurist themes were often used as they reflected the forward thinking music from the time and arguably the build up to the millennium. It also creates a sense of scale and atmosphere that is present within Special Requests music.

Gradient detail around the track names which links both front and back covers.

I decided to change from the idea of creating and entire album cover as the designs I came up with felt as though they weren't capturing what this kind of dance music was about. It is also common for dance records to concentrate more heavily on the centre labels on the record itself which will have a cut out circle on the sleeve so it can always be visible.

After looking at some examples I found some labels I have drawn inspiration from (see above post).

I wanted the typography to be a strong focus with this project and explored how I could represent a culture such as club music through the use of it alone.

For the extra information on the sticker I have combined two typefaces (Ariel and Letter) mixing up different weights and sizes to make the label. The bold attention-grabbing type communicates what the music is about and reflects the nature of it well.