I was recently invited to participate in a panel discussion about music and visual communication during a one-day festival at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm. The panelists were asked to choose a project to use as a basis for the conversation, I chose to talk about one of my most extensive ongoing projects, the graphic profile for the record company where I work – YEAR0001. Below is a brief summary of that presentation.
The label was born sometime around 2015, as a means to release the music that the founders were already working on (Yung Lean, Sad boys, Drain Gang etc) and to create the opportunity to build an alternative platform for a new wave of emerging indie artists.
Since the artists themselves had such a vibrant and aesthetically confident style, the record label’s own aesthetic needed to be something that didn’t compete with that. This started a discussion about how we could build a design language based on these premises. We looked at other industries – pharmaceutical packaging, sports equipment, tech companies, etc.
One factor that felt important was that the record company’s own visual language would not scream for attention. The artists and their art should be the focus. The record company as such should not actively seek attention, but rather function like the contents list on the back of the packaging for something like an electronic product or a tube of toothpaste (We’ve actually done a tooth brush too).
In a time when social media has really become the main (only) way to distribute new media and where the art is thus often lumped together under the term “content” – products whose purpose is to generate interactions for their creators – we instead wanted to see ourselves as caretakers or protectors of the cultural expressions we work with.
Much like The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, that acts as a backup facility for the world’s crop diversity, we wanted to have the label – and it’s releases – act as containers for the rare and valuable contents inside, culture that must be preserved for the sake of the future. Because if we are not careful, it might be lost.
