Entertainment design may bring to mind the drawing up of movie posters or the selection of album artwork, but, while pertaining to such, it is not so much a design as it is a way to market a product. It therefore serves as the underlying backbone of consumerism. Times Square has become one of the major tourist attractions of the world for its presence of entertainment design. Likewise, it has become a fast-paced site for marketers because of its appeal to tourists. As we continue to grow accustomed to ever-changing technology, we become bored with the old, instilled with the impression that we need the latest and greatest. Nothing remains hip for long, attributable to a number of causes. Short attention spans aside, hip is something innovative, something unlike anything else at the time. Marketers continue to develop hip and exciting means for marketing their products in order to spark interest in the consumers. With this continued inventing and replacing, sometimes hip gets lost in the transition and fades away. Other times a hip innovation catches on, becoming so copious it loses its hipness and crosses over to the mainstream. This blog aims to examine some of today's current trends in entertainment design in an overall discussion of the presence of hip in entertainment design.
Products are marketed all around us through billboard ads.In Times Square, these ads are nearly ubiquitous, from window panes to benches to the sides of buses.However, Times Square is also home to much more garish forms of billboard ads such as the flashy, neon-lighted video screens that hover over a variety of department stores.
"Dazed tourists have no idea where they're going as they bobble-head across the street, shooting glances to the sky -- ''Wow, neon!'' -- to the sidewalk -- ''Wow, people!'' -- and back again. Ads and temptation everywhere: for sports cars, for boxers, for trips abroad" (Elliot).
Much of the appeal, as stated by VR Macbeth in her Shopping Guide to Times Square, is “the way your favorite stores are represented but in a completely different way, often with flashing lights and crazy floor plans that make shopping a true experience" (Macbeth).
Recorded with a video-camera, this thirty-second video reveals much more than it may seem. It demonstrates what Leah Hitchings discusses in her article, "Times Sq. Ads Spread Via Tourists’ Cameras," that common people are no longer recording videos to show their friends via television. Instead, they are uploading them onto the Internet on sites such as YouTube where anyone in the world can view it. This, in turn, becomes especially useful for marketers because their company gets represented through these videos. Hitchings writes, "Hosting events in Times Square...is like buying product placement in a TV show or a movie — except the cameras are held by consumers and the placement is on the Internet." The remarkable thing about Times Square is that although confined by space, companies have continuously been able to market their products in new and exciting ways. Designed to be more than a billboard, experiential marketing is the latest in marketing trends, actually advertising while allowing the customers to try a product. You could say it's like those people at the mall that try to recruit you over to their station to try some perfume product, but in the world of commercial advertising it is an original and unique experience. Charmin was one of the first executions of such a feat.
Wow, right? I'm astonished that the toilet paper didn't have a dyed Charmin logo on it, seeing as it appeared on nearly everything else. With a catchy jingle to dance to, an area for "sledding", and a toilet mascot (I want that costume!), it seems like there's a bit of over-advertising involved. Did Charmin really rent out a building to allow people to use their toilet paper in the restrooms? It's remarkable that it was so successful, evident by the lines of people. It's like I know there are restrooms readily available in all of the surrounding stores, but I'd rather wait in line to try this new toilet paper. Sarcasm aside, this could very well be the future of advertising. To me, it's like a role reversal, where rather than someone coming to your door to sell you something, you are going into their doors to have something marketed to you.
Experiential marketing is a hip concept, one which is fresh and vibrant, but with the success of Charmin's spectacle, we will surely be seeing more of such feats in the near future. That being said, when this concept becomes widespread and we're looking at the equivalent to a flea market of advertising booths, experiential marketing will inevitably cross over, becoming an everyday norm of equal annoyance to everyone. I'd say the neon advertisements and everything else that gives Times Square its ambience is here to stay.
Also present in Times Square is MTV Studios (pictured above). Since the middle of the twentieth century, when television sets were becoming more widespread in the common household, television has had a continued influence on popular music. Music television variety shows such as Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert and American Bandstand became popular. In addition to the dancers, stunts, film shorts, and sketches featured on these shows, variety shows also featured performers lip-synching to pre-recorded music. Although not actually live performances, they allowed viewers to watch their favorite artists on a television rather than listening to them on the radio. Additionally, it allowed up-and-coming artists to “break out” by exposing them to the mainstream. According to Tom McCourt and Nabeel Zuberi, television "shapes popular musical culture as much as the sound recordings themselves" (McCourt, Zuberi). While variety shows served as a highly successful mesh between music and television during its time, the launch of MTV (Music Television) on August 1, 1981 explicitly challenged the norms of television programming by airing twenty-four hours of music videos in a constant 'flow', as opposed to the individual programming used by other television networks. The first music video aired by MTV, entitled "Video Killed The Radio Star" by the Buggles, "proved somewhat prophetic as MTV greatly transformed the nature of music industry stardom over the next several years" (Burns). Prior to the airing of this video, MTV creator John Lack famously stated six words that commenced the revolution: "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll."
While this clip was already two years old at the time, MTV alone pushed sales for the single to five million copies. Singles are tracks from an album that are individually released for promotional purposes such as airplay on radio stations. While the artist may have some voice in which song is selected, the record label ultimately has the final say because they need the song to be appealing to listeners in order to increase sales. With the arrival of MTV, record companies were quick to join the fad and began overseeing the making of music videos as well. The first music videos aired were provided free of charge by the record companies because it was free advertising for their clients and themselves. Record companies reported rising sales within months.
"Music videos have broken through TV's most hallowed boundaries. As commercials in themselves, they have erased the very distinction between the commercial and the program. As nonstop sequences of discontinuous episodes, they have erased the boundaries between programs" (Aufderheide 57).
While certainly true, Aufderheide's discussion on the impact of music videos was published in March of 1986, only five years after the birth of MTV. Considering that the early 1980s were undoubtedly an exciting time for the music world, it is perhaps why Aufderheide seems to aggrandize music videos as some sort of unforeseeable innovation. However, don't music videos feature the same lip-synching present in the variety shows of the pre-MTV era? Music videos did not emerge out of nowhere, but were merely an adaptation of what came before it. Nor was MTV as revolutionary as Aufderheide's premature article, as only a few months later, MTV began "moving toward block programming, and...began to look more like a traditional television schedule" (McCourt, Zuberi).
Although music videos are 'nothing new under the sun,' there have been some interesting instances in history. But before we go into that, we should examine the different types of music videos. Karyn Charles Rybacki and Donald Jay Rybacki, in their cultural analysis of music videos, claim that a music video typically consists of at least one of three forms: performance, narrative, or conceptual.
Performance videos, the most prevalent, feature the artist performing, usually on a stage in front of fans. However, nearly all of these videos are not actual live performances. The artist, instead, is lip-synching and/or pretending to play their instrument, while the crowd contains fans and extras, both of which are there to appear in the video. “(Lip-synching) allows the viewer to ‘sing along,’ participating in the celebrity and the dream, perhaps even claiming ownership of the fantasy” (Aufderheide 66). The reason for lip-synching is simple: Have you ever been to a concert where the performance sounded exactly like it did on the album? Of course not. Within the music video, the sales item is the record and so the performance in the video needs to sound exactly like it. Using live performance footage also makes it extremely difficult in post-production to synchronize the cut to performance shots. Nevertheless, Bruce Springsteen was one of the rare few who did use actual concert footage and synchronized the album track to it. And it worked out quite nicely. Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark Nice dance moves, Bruce. The marketing ploy of a performance video is to give you, the viewer, a vicarious, concert-going experience, as if you were a part of the crowd. One would purchase the record through a desire to identify with this crowd and the experience, reminiscing about the music video while listening to the track. This video also demonstrates how powerful music videos, and maybe even MTV, had become. You may recognize that lucky fan who gets pulled on stage at the end of the video as “Friends” star, Courteney Cox. Then a nobody who had appeared in a few commercials here and there, her appearance in the video helped to launch her to stardom.
A narrative video tells a sequential story whose roles may include paid actors, the artist, or both. Love stories are the most common theme. "The narrative pattern is one of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Action in the story is dominated by males who do things and females who passively react or wait for something to happen" (Rybacki). A-Ha’s "Take On Me" tells the tale of a teenage girl who suddenly becomes a part of the newspaper comic she is reading. What ensues is a series of montages, using rotoscope animation, as she tries to bring the comic’s hero back with her to the other side. Much like The Buggles’ "Video Killed The Radio Star," MTV helped propel the song to number one on the U.S. charts and A-Ha took home eight awards at the MTV Music Video Awards. It was recently listed as number sixteen on MTV’s "Greatest Videos of All Time." AHA - Take On Me A conceptual video is a non-sequential story but through imagery and symbolism it can create emotions. It can carry multiple meanings and is open for interpretation, often leaving a lasting impression on the viewer. Ed Gonzalez and Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine hailed "Take On Me" as "one of the most successfully executed concept videos of the early MTV era" (Cinquemani, Gonzalez). While certainly the concept of fantasy vs. reality would deem it a conceptual video, its sequential story-telling does not fall into Rybacki's description of a conceptual video.
Instead let’s look at Madonna’s “Human Nature” which would fall into the category of a conceptual video. While the song serves as a response to the backlash she previously received regarding her use of sexual content, the video complements that with some suggestive imagery. Madonna’s statement is that she’s not sorry for what she did because sex is human nature and she should be able to talk about it. She’s saying that she is here to stay and people should get used to that. Madonna - Human Nature What's the deal with the male dancers? Do they represent human nature, as they continually force Madonna into suggestive positions? Why do they were blindfolds? Perhaps they represent her critics. Afterall, those same positions she is forced into make her appear to be trapped, as if she is being held back from what she wants to do. This is also made evident by the use of boxes, representative of cages. The dancers' appearance in the cages could represent the critics' close-mindedness, that they are not going to change. Their minds are trapped. The six boxes could be representative of everybody having their own struggles. At the end of the video, as they appear in one box together, she's saying that neither side is going to change so they're just going to have to deal with each other. Afterall, it's human nature.
Music videos have remained hip for so long because of the infinite amount of video concepts within these three categories. Madonna, not only in this video but in all of her videos, uses them as a means to reinforce her persona. This style has remained influential on many of today's artists. Michael Jackson was another big influence in the music video world, not only for his innovative videos, but also for his appeal to the suburbs. Prior to his stardom, black performers almost never appeared, an issue brought up by many artists including Rick James and David Bowie. While ultimately serving as a hip, new innovation of the time, there has also been some negative reaction to music videos. Many claim that with video came the emphasis of looks within the music world. Talentless, but good-looking, musical performers can now be met with commercial success. It could be argued that looks have become even more important than the music itself, where MTV-viewers may simply mute the video in order to focus more on the performer, admire what they are wearing, maybe even run out to purchase similar articles of clothing. Britney Spears, anyone? This trend may have also contributed to the shift in popular music where performers now lip-synch at their own concerts.
Los Angeles Critic Marc Weingarten writes that, "MTV is the death of the imagination. It has impoverished kids' critical faculties and blunted their abilities to interpret music in a meaningful way for themselves" (DeRogatis). There have been countless times where upon listening to a single, I'll immediately visualize the music video. You watch a video enough times it inevitably becomes fixated into your brain. It subsequently affects my experience with the other songs on the album, those without a music video, to which I find myself struggling to interpret them, attempting to visualize my own corresponding video, endlessly contemplating what the artist was thinking while writing the lyrics, instead of simply appreciating the song for what it is. Perhaps this is what The Buggles meant in their song "Video Killed The Radio Star." Notice the emotional despair in Trevor Horn's vocals, the distortion of his voice as if it were deriving from an old 1950s transistor radio, the blowing up of a television set toward the end of the video..."The group is clearly saying that music matters more than image. But through the contorted looking glass of MTV, the video came to mean exactly the opposite. Bye-bye radio and music, hello video" (DeRogatis).
None of this matters, however, because over the last decade, MTV's ratings have declined and they have had to rely more and more on their non-music programs. When it became apparent that these shows were highly effective towards ratings, MTV began airing more and more new shows. Each year, there was a significant drop in the amount of music played. In current times, there is about an hour of music videos played each morning from 6AM to 7AM. And then there's TRL which doesn't even play the entire music video and is frequently interrupted by screaming fans that nobody cares about. What are these high quality shows that everybody seems to be watching on MTV instead of music videos? They've got overly-dramatic reality shows such as The Real World and Laguna Beach, crude comedies like Jackass, and shallow, stereotype-reinforcing dating shows such as NEXT.
So what does this mean for the future of music videos? To account for the loss of music video programming, music videos have been made available for purchase on iTunes and/or for streaming on such sites as Yahoo! and AOL.com. Through this transition, however, the underlying promotional intentions were lost, and music videos served solely as a means of entertainment, a way for music fans to watch their favorite bands' music videos that they could no longer see or were never able to see on MTV. Since these fans are only searching for bands of familiarity, it becomes harder for new bands to 'break out' without first 'selling out'. But that's another story. Ultimately, music videos have almost completely faded away, however hope is not all lost as a new means of self-promotion has emanated that also makes use of the Internet. Bands such as Queens of the Stone Age are now taking advantage of the spread of information on the Internet. In April 2007, the winners of a QOTSA fan site contest were sent an unreleased track along with a handwritten note asking fans to share the song in any way possible. Clearly, the Internet is the easiest way and, soon thereafter, the song was spreading all across message boards and music blogs. That same month, Queens of the Stone Age posted a promotional video on their official site. Not your ordinary promotional video, but instead a flash video that you'll have to see for yourself (below). This video most likely served as a way to welcome those who had, in some way or another, listened to the released track. The track may attract new fans and the video is there to further promote the album. As nifty as this all sounds, it's also 'nothing new under the sun', but rather the next step, an adaptation of the music video before it. This new trend will probably replace music videos as we know them today. Still want your MTV? Queens of the Stone Age Promo Video
While Times Square is home to MTV Studios, it also holds the Virgin Megastore, the largest music store in the world. That video of Times Square I posted earlier has a glimpse of the lit store. Whether it's a television network, a department store, or just street performers, the aesthetic presence of music within Times Square surely demonstrates Rybacki's take on it. "Music...has always had a visual element...the 'look' a band strived for in performance, concert staging, and promotional publicity have all helped create a visual imagery for rock" (Rybacki). I've already discussed how music videos made the look of a band more important, the use of concert staging to promote a band, but what I have not yet discussed is an album's cover design. "Cover design projects bring together two artists: the designer and the musician. They offer the opportunity to create a visual to represent a non-visual art" (Grant). Serving as a way to identify an album, some album designs have become as famous as the artists who release them. Such designs are featured in the video below (see link) in an entertaining battle that you'll just have to see for yourself:
Today it may seem as if album cover designs have been around since the beginning, but in fact, there was a time when 78s were packaged with a plain, cardboard cover, displaying only the title of the work and the artist. 78s are those big, round, vinyl things you keep seeing in the basement. It wasn't until 1939 that the concept of an album cover was developed. As the first art director for the recently formed Columbia Records, Alex Steinweiss seized the opportunity to approach the album design more creatively. Steinweiss attempted to draw a visual representation of the music and apply its moods and symbolism into the design. Eight years later, in 1947, Steinweiss implemented his design through his invention of the paperboard jacket, a protection of vinyl records against scratches, to which he could print his designs on. "Album cover design has over fifty years of history and, despite several format changes (78 to LP to cassette to CD), many things have remained the same" (Grant). When you think about it, the only thing that's really changed is the size of the design, which we'll discuss more further on. Steinweiss would occasionally use photographic images in his designs, a feat that was heavily appropriated by other album designers during the 1950s. Donald Kasprzak explains in "The Art of the Album Cover" that designs were no longer about the art, but were used instead as a commercial strategy and varied among genres of music.
Jazz albums of the 1950's produced great achievements in record cover art, not only for its heavy usage of photography, but also for its innovative combinations of color and type which helped to set jazz album covers apart. While budget concerns restricted the amount of colors used, covers with more colors tended to lack the success of those that used mainly black, white, and one other color.
As rock and roll emerged in the 1960s, the recording artists began to play a larger role in the design process by voicing their ideas, shifting the design process stylistically and conceptually.
The 1970s expanded upon the use of photography, transitioning into more illustrations of fantasy, but the 1980s and early 1990s brought the next big shift in style with the popularity of punk music. Winston Smith is the most notable artist of this genre, responsible for the cut-and-paste collage look that is commonly associated with punk.
"So well composed are the designs that they sometimes appear to be a painting. He seems most fond of using images from the 1950s, mashed-up and combined in a way to turn the innocent, happy feeling of the original pictures into rebellious, authority-questioning, psychedelic collages" (The Future of Album Art).
Like with anything in the music industry, there is going to be that battle between what the musician wants and what the record label wants. Today, however, labels are allowing more creative rights to these artists, encouraging them to become more involved in the design process. Even so, most musicians don't come up with the album's design per se, but rather how they think the album should look, what moods it should evoke. The biggest concern with musicians is the choice of photographs used. You know, don't want that picture of you in the middle of a sneeze on that front cover. And much like album artwork varies among genre, so too does the musicians' attitude toward it. "Singer/songwriters seem to care the most, followed closely by young rock bands - and young 'pop star hopefuls' seem to be mostly concerned with clothing, hair and make-up" (Grant).
Even with the creative rights permitted to artists, there still remains a lot of restriction, as artists are only able to work within the confines of what society deems as appropriate. For whatever reason, our society cannot take anything lightly anymore. Creativeness has become 'intolerance' and avant-garde has become 'politically incorrect'. Back in the 1950's and 1960's, almost any album artwork was accepted, most likely because it was still new and nobody really knew what they were doing. It is as if there now exists an implicit set of guidelines for musicians to follow. However, these guidelines seem to inconsistently vary as to what is and is not acceptable. Perhaps Winston Smith is able to get away with his social commentary designs because he is using images from the 1950's. In other words, if they were appropriate then, they should be appropriate now. I mentioned earlier that some album covers have become as famous as the musicians. Well, some albums have also become infamous, for igniting controversy over its inclusion of offensive material – or what appears to be "offensive."
Motown group The Five Keys' design for On Stage (1957) had to be altered because Rudy West's (far left) forefinger was mistaken by some to be his genitalia. The offensive digit was airbrushed away, as was Alice Cooper's thumb on the cover of Love It To Death (1971) for the same reason. It is as if the album design represents much more than meets the eye, becoming offensive not for what appears but for what others perceive them to be. Artist Andy Warhol designed The cover of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers (1971), controversial for featuring a pulled-down zipper. While a humorous situation in everyday life, such was not the case to critics, whose 'XYZ outcries' were addressed and implemented on reissue editions which instead display a pulled-up zipper. These same critics called for a ban on Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. (1984) design for what appears to be "The Boss" urinating on the American flag. However, his hand could just as easily be placed within his pocket. The intent of the design has never been confirmed. Why should one person's interpretation mean another person's loss? With no real set guidelines, it's difficult to identify where 'the line' is. Who has the right to say what is and isn't suitable? Forgetting about the critics and the public for a second, a major issue comes from retail stores. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has repeatedly refused to display an album on their shelves because of the content of its cover, be it sexual, violent, suggestive, or gestural. Being that a large percentage of sales are going to come from Wal-Mart stores, executives are forced to change the design in order for Wal-Mart to sell it. Wal-Mart's track record includes (from top left to bottom right): Scorpions' Love at First Sting (1984) for its partial nudity and Nirvana's In Utero (1993) both for its cover and for the song "Rape Me" printed on the back. The cover was partially changed and the printed song title was changed to "Waif Me," although the song itself remained the same. Wal-Mart decided that White Zombie's Supersexy Swingin' Sounds (1996) was too offensive FOR EVERYBODY and a blue string bikini was painted over the model on its cover. John Cougar Mellencamp's Mr. Happy Go Lucky (1996) originally featured Jesus and The Devil on its cover in order to reflect Mellencamp's close encounter with death after a nearly fatal heart attack. However, Mellencamp did not design the artwork and so he did not mind when Wal-Mart insisted that he change the cover. Jesus and The Devil were airbrushed out while the rest of the album remained the same.
While this certainly pertains to freedom of speech, there are times when design concepts come at an inopportune time. Dream Theater's Live Scenes From New York was released shortly before the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. Its cover "depicted a flaming NYC skyline, including the World Trade Center and Statue of Liberty" [Shock & Awe (Banned Cover Art)]. The Coup's Party Music was scheduled for release on September 12th, 2001. "The original cover had a picture of Boots Riley and Pam the Funkstress standing by burning World Trade Center towers" [Shock & Awe (Banned Cover Art)]. Both albums covers were changed out of respect for the tragic events that occurred, the latter being pushed back to a later release date to account for the cover change. You'd think that most people would make the same decision. Isn't it safe to say that artists know where the line is? Do others really need to be deciding for us? I mean sure there may be a time when something is brought forth that will strike a nerve or go too far and if that's the case, it should be the responsibility of the record label or representative to make the decision, not Wal-Mart or anybody else.
The album's design is not there for the vendor. And it's not there solely for the liking of the musicians or the designer either, but for the consumer as well, to whom it makes a substantial difference. Face it. A large portion of the fun is unwrapping that newly purchased CD, opening it up, and becoming mesmerized with the liner notes, lyrics, and artwork. It adds a whole new dimension to the purchasing decision of consumers. In her article, published almost precisely upon the release of Apple’s iTunes, Angelynn Grant predicted that this tactile experience would shift concurrently with the complete digitalization of music in the near-future, "although buying the music without any accompanying graphics is unlikely to work" (Grant). The transition from LP to CD called for a downsizing of the artwork by seventy-five percent, and with the success of iTunes and digital music, the CD has been gradually fading away, and soon there will no longer be a tangible object present in music listening.
Much like music videos and advertisements, album cover designs have remained fascinating, hip for their continued ability to implement new designs, even if they do use past influences. Though some would say hip means not changing for anybody, albums are not a living entity and cannot physically rebel. But through them, artists are given a way to express themselves, and if the need be, to voice their opinions and rebel. Surely the amount of controversy that surrounds a design on a small piece of paper would represent its hipness. Does this mean that hip is fading away?
Through its inclusion of on-screen mini-art, an inch by inch picture of the album’s cover that displays on the iPod's screen, Apple has recognized the importance of the album’s artwork (note the sarcasm). Oh, and there's no insert either. You buy an album, you get the tracks and the bouillon-cube-sized artwork, that's it! Lost, it seems, is the fun and creativity in music listening. Ricardo Baca argues that the magic of album covers has not been lost, but rather has become hard to see. "There’s as much creativity and beauty in cover art today as there was in the 1970s - maybe more. But through the glare of a jewel case or the scratches on an iPod screen, it doesn’t look as majestic" (Baca).
Apple's first attempt to accomodate for the lost goodies was with the 'digital booklet' in 2004. The digital booklet is a PDF file of all the information from the liner notes. You can't use them on your iPod, but you can print them out and put them in a jewel case of your own! As you can see, the response wasn't exactly overwhelming. If anything, it was a step backward. The latest attempt, however, has incorporated video and, slowly but surely, has made progress. A company called TuneBooks has teamed up with Apple and introduced interactive liner notes (a working title, I hope), featuring lyrics, photos, links to websites, and merchandise. And it even works on the iPod! How 'bout that? Check out a sample here: http://www.cddesign.com/covertalk/images/Untitled-1.html
Sure, it may not have that factory-fresh smell, and you won't get the same thrill you did opening the shrink wrap of the CD but, inevitably, the digital revolution is upon us. As I mentioned before in my discussion about advertisements, we love us some technology. Whether TuneBooks becomes the new standard or just another pixel on the ever-changing portrait is determinable only by the test of time (probably a few months).
