EMIGRE 9
4AD
Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko
Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko: EMIGRE 9 [4AD]. Berkeley, CA: Emigre, 1988. Original edition [6,000 copies]. Slim quartos. Printed saddle stitched wrappers. [32] pp. Elaborate graphic design throughout. This oversized journal inevitably invited use and abuse, but a lightly handled, nearly fine copy.
11.125 x 16.75 saddle stitched magazine exploring the nature of heritage in contemporary Graphic Design, circa 1988. Printed at Lompa Printing, Albany, CA. Design and production: Rudy VanderLans. Typeface designs: Zuzana Licko.
Contents
- Tim Anstaett, Introduction
- Rudy VanderLans: interview with Ivo Watts-Russell
- John Oomkes: interview with Cocteau Twins
- 23 Envelope, 8-page section (design: Vaughan Oliver and Chris Bigg, photographs: Simon Larbalestier)
- Atto Squisito: interview with Throwing Muses
- Rudy VanderLans, separate interviews with Vaughan Oliver and Nigel Grierson
- Daniel Kapelian, Autodafe (essay)
Here is the New York Times Vaughan Oliver obituary written by Daniel E. Slotnik and published on Jan. 3, 2020: “Vaughan Oliver, a British graphic designer whose album covers for the independent record label 4AD became visual accompaniments to influential alternative rock bands like Pixies, the Breeders and Cocteau Twins, died on Sunday in London. He was 62.
Mr. Oliver grew up immersed in rock music and intrigued by album cover art. After studying design, he knew that he wanted to make artwork that was a fitting accompaniment to the music on an album.
“I always wanted to design sleeves as a kid,” he said in an interview with the online magazine Designboom. “Record sleeves are ephemeral, and I always wanted to make them more than that.”
Mr. Oliver began designing album covers for 4AD after meeting Ivo Watts-Russell, who founded the label with Peter Kent in 1980, at a party in London. He formed a design partnership called 23 Envelope with the photographer Nigel Grierson in 1983. After he parted ways with Mr. Grierson in 1988 he kept working for 4AD, collaborating with Chris Bigg and other artists under the studio name v23.
4AD became known for releasing music that did not conform to mainstream expectations, and Mr. Oliver’s cover designs helped catch the eyes of record store browsers who might not have heard of the label’s artists. Each of his illustrations was informed by the band’s music, and therefore they were quite diverse, but they shared a surrealist sensibility.
“My goal was always to turn music into an object, granting it a physical dimension,” Mr. Oliver said in an interview with the online publication O Magazine.
Mr. Oliver and his studio partners designed a cover with a ghostly lace photograph for the Cocteau Twins’ celestial album “Treasure” (1984) and doused a Valentine’s Day heart with what looked like blood on a brilliant green and red background for the cover of the Breeders’ “Last Splash” (1993), an album that began as a side project for the Pixies bassist Kim Deal and the Throwing Muses guitarist Tanya Donnelly.
His designs for Pixies, a jarring indie rock band from Boston that inspired later alternative groups, included a sepia photo of a topless flamenco dancer for “Surfer Rosa” (1988); a red, ringed Earth for the cover of “Bossanova” (1990); and a photograph of a monkey with a halo overlaid with a geometric design and surrounded by numbers for “Doolittle” (1989) . . . . Mr. Oliver said that he needed to communicate with bands and carefully consider their music before he could make artwork that conveyed their style.
“I simply tried, all through my career, to create a different identity for each band I worked with,” he said. “Creating feelings or aesthetic moods derived from the music, from the texture and atmosphere the music itself already had. You would only get that thanks to a close collaboration and many conversations with the band in particular.”
Among the other 4AD artists for whom Mr. Oliver designed covers were This Mortal Coil, Lush, TV on the Radio and Scott Walker. A memorial on the label’s website said that “without Vaughan, 4AD would not be 4AD,” adding that “his style also helped to shape graphic design in the late 20th century.”
His first work for the label was in 1980 for the Modern English single “Gathering Dust,” and his last was in 2018 for a 30th-anniversary reissue of two Pixies records. He also designed cover art for the band Bush and for music by the filmmaker David Lynch. He had international showings of his art, taught design and worked with commercial clients like Microsoft, Sony and L’Oréal.
Mr. Oliver said that he thought cover art remained an important complement to music, even though digital music formats have largely made physical albums obsolete.
“The cover, even if it has no physical presence, is another music tool,” he said. “That’s why there are still covers today that are very … true. Any cover capturing and expressing the state of mind of the music it represents is true.”
From Emigre's website: “Emigre, Inc. is a digital type foundry based in Berkeley, California. Founded in 1984, coinciding with the birth of the Macintosh computer, the Emigre team, consisting of Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, with the addition of Tim Starback in 1993, were among the early adaptors to the new digital technology.
“From 1984 until 2005 Emigre published the legendary Emigre magazine, a quarterly publication devoted to visual communication. Emigre created some of the very first digital layouts and typeface designs winning them both world-wide acclaim and much criticism. The exposure of these typefaces in Emigre magazine eventually lead to the creation of Emigre Fonts, one of the first independent type foundries utilizing personal computer technology for the design and distribution of fonts. They created the model for hundreds of small foundries who followed in their footsteps.
“As a team, Emigre has been honored with numerous awards including the 1994 Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, and the 1998 Charles Nypels Award for excellence in the field of typography. In 1993 they were selected as a leading design innovator in the First Annual I.D. Forty. Emigre is also a recipient of the 1997 American Institute of Graphic Arts Gold Medal Award, its highest honors. In October 2010 the Emigre team was inducted as Honorary members of the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago, and in 2013 Licko received the prestigious Annual Typography Award from the Society of Typographic Aficionados. Most recently Emigre received the 29th New York Type Directors Club Medal. Watch the video tribute shown at the presentation of the TDC Medal in the Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union in New York City in July 2016.
“Complete sets of Emigre magazine are in the permanent collections of: The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Design Museum in London, The Denver Art Museum, The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, The Museum fur Gestaltung in Zurich; and in 2011, five digital typefaces from the Emigre Type Library were acquired by MoMA New York for their permanent design and architecture collection.“