Blue Note Style vs Factory Records Style
ブルーノート・スタイル / ファクトリー・レコーズ
Both sit in Music Graphics, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Blue Note Style
Reid Miles turned out sleeve after sleeve for the jazz label with monochrome photography, two-color printing and boldly cropped type. Improvisation inside constraint became the graphic translation of jazz itself.
Factory Records Style
At the Manchester label Saville made sleeves that refuse to explain the music. Borrowed industrial color charts, classical paintings and waveform diagrams turned post-punk's intelligent void into a style.
| Blue Note Style | Factory Records Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1955–1967 | 1978–1992 |
| Family | Music Graphics | Music Graphics |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Grainy monochrome photographs / Two-color economy / Bold cropping / Improvised type layouts | Refusal to explain / Borrowed imagery from other fields / Restrained typography / Catalogue numbers as institution |
| Best used for | Record or event promotion that must look strong within two-color printing · A single portrait carrying the piece while type speaks the texture of the sound | Music or exhibition promotion that withholds explanation and leaves only resonance · Making numbering and specification itself the way a brand speaks |
| Type | One face used at extreme size contrasts, lines cut off at the photograph's edge | Set small at the edge so neither title nor artist takes the stage |
| Composition | The photograph pushed to one side, the freed side given over to improvised type | One unrelated plate at the center with the surround left silent |
| Material | Black plus a single spot color only, the photograph's grain left intact | Industrial color charts and special finishes borrowed, the print spec treated as work |
| Caution | Adding inks and cleaning up the photograph drains the tension that constraint produced and leaves a tidy music advertisement. | An unrelated plate chosen without necessity reads as mere suggestiveness and leaves the listener with nothing to remember. |