Lost in the ether

Iconic cover designs will soon be history. But there’s something I will miss even more in a world of digital music distribution.

I’m sure there will be a niche for physical music storage mediums for a couple of years to come, but the summer hit of 2015 will not be pressed on CDs and shipped all around the world.

Music is dematerilizing. And with the death of the Compact Disc, the packaging design will persish as well (it has been already suffering for almost two decades, when those tiny CDs replaced the 12 x 12 inch canvas of vinyl LPs).

Designing record sleeves is probably considered the most exciting and fun job among graphic designers. It has become an “art form” of its own. Lots of books about record sleeve design have been published. I’ve got about 10 of those and I like flicking through the pages full of beautiful photography, colourful illustrations and interesting typography. When I browse through my vinyl shelf, there are lots of records whose design I adore. But as much as I enjoy looking at an Autechre sleeve by tDR, I could do without. What I will miss in a world without CD/LP/DVDs isn’t so much the work of graphic designer or visual artists.

What I will miss are credits, thank-you-lists and liner notes. And cryptic messages etched into the vinyl. I will also miss stuff like the handwriting which consistently occured on many Sonic Youth records during the last 20 years. Or blurred photos a band took in their rehearsal room.

Because what I love about record sleeves and booklets - more than just the design - is the documentary character of it. What I hold in my hand is preserved information. It’s a cultural document. It’s been printed at one point in history and it can’t be altered, it stays with me (and even future generations) and I can access it every time I want to.

Of course you can put the credits on a website, you can have your handwritten lyrics in a PDF and instead of etching a witty text into dead wax, you could use the comments field in the ID3 tags. You can also blog about the recording and post your pictures on flickr.

But will all of this still be available in 10 or 20 years? What happens if a musician decides to delete documents from his past? What if the band calls it quits and shuts down their website? And will there be any software in 2030 that reads PDF-files from 2008?

When thinking about the demise of physical recordings, I don’t worry about the cover design. There will be new areas to create imagery for music. I’m more concerned about loosing information. Which is kind of paradoxal, because the digital world seems to be full of it.