I’ve been meaning to post about my Delicious bookmarks for a while now, and here is the first installment. I have an ever-growing collection of bookmarks, and I thought I’d share some here.
Up first is a Flickr collection of vintage cassette tape inserts posted by Jubru. I first came across this wonderful set via Grain Edit. These are not inserts from pre-recorded albums, but rather the packaging for blank tapes used for mix tapes and computer data, among other things.
Seeing this collection brought me back to my youth, when making mix tapes was a favorite pasttime of mine. Even after CDs arrived, I still had a tape deck in my car, thus mix tapes were of vital importance. It also reminds me of my older siblings recording songs off the radio, using a second tape recorder to capture the music, waiting with a finger on the pause button for a song to come on, the whole time hoping they would get it started soon enough to catch the entire song. Though not shown in this collection, I’m quite sure all these inserts feature space for notes on the inside for listing the contents of the tape (which I often used for a catchy title for my mix, as well as hand-drawn graphics to match the mood of the mix).
Besides the nostalgia, I also love the designs. Being of a minimalist nature myself, the simple graphics strike a chord with me. The slight changes in color schemes for different capacity and quality make for easy reference when shopping for blanks to replenish the supplies at home. Some of my favorites are the Bonsonic, Phillips, and EMI inserts.
Stay tuned for more Deliciousness.
Filed under: Deliciousness, design , design, vintage
March 31, 2009 • 12:50 pm 1
On Technology and the Loss of Tactile Sensation – Music
The tactile experiences associated with music are the ones I miss the most, and therefore the reason I go back to old technology the most. Opening iTunes and pressing play is just not the same as pulling a vinyl record from it’s sleeve, placing it on the turntable and dropping the stylus onto the spinning platter – or removing a cassette from its case, checking the tape to see where it was stopped last and popping it into the tape deck – or, even, putting a compact disc into a discman or the top of a boombox.
Seeing a one inch square image of an album cover on my screen is certainly not equal to seeing the contents of the windows change on Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti as you pull the inner sleeve out or opening and closing the working zipper on the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. Of course, much of this interaction was already removed from the music experience with the advent of cassette tapes and CDs. But the act of opening the jewel case and paging through the inserts still provided some level of interaction. CDs also offered more opportunity for creative album artwork, such as Tool’s 10,000 Days with its stereoscopic lenses through which the artwork could be viewed, or Pink Floyd’s Pulse, which featured (in its first runs) a blinking, red led light.
Purchasing music has also changed with new technology. While shopping through iTunes definitely has its upsides (everything is always available), it lacks the experience of flipping through LPs or CDs in a real store. There is less likelihood of stumbling across something unexpected, such as a rare bootleg or first printing of special artwork. However, iTunes does add the feature of offering up recommendations based on the artist or album you are looking at (this used to be the job of the employees at record stores).
All of these sensations related to the purchase and playing of music have led to somewhat of a resurgence of LPs. Although not near the levels of yesteryear, there are people, stores and record labels that still cling to the idea of physical albums. A sign that LPs are making a bit of a comeback is evident in Best Buy’s decision to carry vinyl.
Filed under: social commentary , music