Sign of the Times: Music and Design, 1960s-1980s - Cooper Hewitt design lecture.

Cooper–Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, is one of the most respected design museum's housing some of the most important pieces of design history. It regularly posts videos of design lectures held in New York and this one seemed relevant to where I want to go with my dissertation.  Below are a type up of my notes from said lecture.

Art, Design, Music & Pop Culture have always had a crossover. Members of The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Who all went to Art college. Charlie Watts before the band even started in 1955 was a graphic designer by trade. One of the first designers that these art students would of been interested in was Saul Bass. His title sequences were essentially abstract art set to music.

Going back a little further in the late 40's/early 50's, modernism was banned or rejected by music, the fashion of the teddy boys was Edwardian in style. This in the late 50's this all changed with the influence of pop art. Former teddy boys, the Beatles took pop art to a whole new level with Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band. A £3000 album cover that put Sir Peter Blake in the public consciousness. A regular album at the time on average cost around £50. Another big pop art & more importantly Post modern album cover is the debut by the work of the Velvet Underground & Nico. The front cover is a banana against a white background and signed by Andy Warhol. It took the vernacular (the everyday) and appropriated it to give it a different meaning.

Milton Glaser's, the founder of Push Pin, famous poster for Bob Dylan's Greatest hits we may think is a psychedelic masterpiece but it directly references the style of art nouveau a style famous from 1890 until the First World War. Psychedelic posters at the time were all very reminiscent of Art Nouveau. Victorian imagery, curvilinear calligraphy & finesse all very characteristic.

Designs done by Paula Scher appropriated design styles dependent on theme per LP for her design career at CBS records. With a hatred of Helvetica, use of a swiss style was unlikely to be adopted. Hand lettering, finesse and constructivism, anything but helvetica. Borrowed from the past is the way she describes it in her part of the lecture.

the last speaker spoke on the subject of Punk Rock and praised the anyone can do it attitude. Despite it being different in tone across the globe, there is a universal style in the fanzines that followed each of the scenes; cheap & anti professionalism, despite the methods of communication that they used being nothing new. Collage, the main theme throughout the fanzines, had been around for a long time prior to the birth of punk. An explanation that designing for punks signed to major labels would be harder; making an anti establishment design for a corporate product.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSasiEgUSy4