Since everyone is already decorating

Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For you is my favorite Christmas album. It's perfect. 

Not only chock full of Ronettes, the Crystals and sonic enlightenment, but in a beautiful package! I'm familiar with the christmas gift album art but I absolutely love the minimal double album.

Sometimes I struggle with the idea of Graphic Design and being a Graphic Designer.

But as I discovered over thanksgiving break, album art always brings me back to understanding why I love design.

There is just something really great about it. It's such an undertaking to make a physical representation of something so intangible as song, it's fascinating. I love the minimal repetition and clean shapes of albums from the 50s and 60s, mostly the instrumental ones as the shapes often mimic the rhythm and syncopation of the music. I've been collecting records/album art for as long as I can remember, it's awesome to be able to appreciate them now with a new understanding of design. 

David Bailey

A couple of years ago, my brother gave me Ready Steady Go! for my birthday. I finally got around to reading it last winter and would recommend it to anyone with a vague interest in what was happening in London in the 60s.
I could really devote another post to the book, but for now I'd really just like to talk about David Bailey. Actually, I'd just like to share a couple of his portraits that I really love.





The Mick Jagger and Catherine Deneuve have always been two of my favorite portraits, so it was interesting to learn that Bailey'd shot them. The Marianne Faithful is from 1999, and I think it's rather amazing.