Songs of Praise - Shame - Milk Label Initial Ideas and Development

Songs of Praise is all about Shame getting their voice heard regardless of whether people agree with it or whether it sounds good. For this reason the product I have chosen to represent it is a carton of milk, because singers commonly believe that dairy is bad for your voice and you shouldn’t drink it before you perform, however this an idea that Shame would not believe in because they don’t care how their voice comes across. 

One of the biggest songs on Songs of Praise is ‘One Rizla’ - cigarettes are also bad for your voice supposedly so I looked at vintage cigarette packaging as a design reference. I think the contrast of having a cigarette box inspired label on a carton of milk is very punk as well. These designs are interesting, I think the bottom one especially is very developed, however they didn’t represent the album as well as I’d have liked because they look retro and the album is modern. Also they look too old to work succinctly in modern commercial packaging design. In response to this, I tried to modernise the colouring and layout of one of the designs, as well as trying to introduce staples of punk design - DIY cut and paste style type, and colours like black, red, pink and yellow. The best design of these would probably be the top left blue one because the colours work well and the type is bold and works rationally in the composition. However the problem with this design was that it doesn’t look punk enough. 

I tried to add in punk DIY type and the classic sex pistols inspired combination of yellow and pink, which is very evocative of punk, however they just looked too gimmicky. I looked at the cover for a single by Shame called ‘Visa Vulture’ which targets Theresa May in a true post punk anti-establishment fashion. The cover is very much inspired by punk design and has a lot of similarities to the work Jamie Reid did for the Sex Pistols, however its been modernised into an anti-design modern punk style: pink and yellow have been substituted for garish clashing tertiary colours, with the mis matched DIY type being swapped out for italicised serif type. Instead of a picture of Margaret thatcher or the queen which has been cut out of a newspaper and given a safety pin lip ring, we see see on oddly edited image of Theresa May who’s been badly photoshopped to look like a vampire. 

I tried to replicate some of these garish clashing gradients and serifed type into some more modern punk labels, adding in some digital punk style imagery however firstly, I didn’t think it hit the balance between commercial packaging design and modern punk style that well, being a bit more punk. Secondly there was no real rationale being the designs I was just picking random imagery and colours. 

I thought more about how the cover of Visa Vulture was a modern version of the classic punk DIY design style, which made me explore and question what punk design would look like now. In the 70’s and 80’s, punk design used newspaper cut outs, graffiti and hand-written pictures and drawings because they were cheap and affordable methods of visual communication, while some designers did use this style in a more bespoke fashion, most of the punks making zines or flyers were not designers and didn’t know any rules about graphic design, which lended itself well to the chaotic rule breaking visual style of punk design. So what’s the easiest way to create flyers or posters quickly now? It would be to use a computer.

 I put myself in the mind of someone who doesn’t know any of the fundamental rules of conventional graphic design, and created label designs that stretch type out in an elongated disproportional anti-design way, the name of the album is stretched out as big as possible, assuming fans of punk would want it to be big, loud and in your face. The bar at the bottom is more of a commercial design concern, ensuring the product name and brand are legible and prominent within the hierarchy. I picked clashing and bold colours but felt that the colours needed to be rationalised somehow, so I used the classic pink and yellow of punk and toned them down into dull hues for the final development. I think the design is attention grabbing and evocative of punk yet still considered and suitable to function as packing design. The brown/pink tones don’t contrast each other that much which leads to the main type being not quite as clear and legible as it could be. I like the colour combination and think it works well in the design however it will be a design concern I will take into account.