OUGD403 Studio Brief 1 | 'Violence' Research | Album covers

Heavy Metal

First off I looked into heavy metal album covers by simply using Google Images. I thought this would be a good place to start as heavy metal is often described as ‘violent’ and ‘aggressive’, so I was expecting to find that the band’s logotype and/or album title font would portray this and have a font that shows the violent nature of the music.

Straight away I could see the similarities between the fonts used, they were sharp, pointy and jagged. Overall this made for bad readability, but I think that they wanted the tone of music to come across more than the ability to read the lettering. I feel the reason behind all the points and sharp edges is because weaponry such as knives, axes and swords are all associated with violence, therefore by bringing in similar imagery and characteristics of those weapons the connotations carry over to the font. As well as shape a lot of bands used chrome and metal as a texture for the font and i believe this is again linked to weapons such as knives and the ones mentioned earlier, due to the fact that they’re manufactured from metal. One other thing I noticed with this genre and type, is that letterforms often join up in some way are are linked together. I'm not 100% sure why this is or what the reasoning is but I don;t think I can see any direct link to violence so I will no incorporate that feature in my designs.

The images above all include examples of what I mentioned earlier about the type. 

Hip-Hop/Rap

I thought looking into hip-hop could also be useful as it is often thought of as quite a violent genre of music, especially old gangster rap from the 90s. When I looked at these album covers they weren't as similar to each other like the heavy metal ones were, it was harder to see the similarities and what links them. 

Whereas heavy metal representation of violence through type consisted of sharp edges and other features, hip-hop album cover titles often had messy, non-linear type as if it had been scribbled down quickly. I feel this is linked to very messy paintings and artists that use wild brush strokes to express themselves and their paintings are looked at to be violent.