In August 2008, Victionary, a Hong Kong based Publisher specialized in Art and Design, released Musikraphics. This is a collection of CD and DVD cover designs, and the packages and poster designs. Most of the works collected for this book aren’t the artists’ photography. They’re illustrations, graphics, collages and other kinds of art that are designed for us to learn the images and impressions of each song.

The size of this book is 220 by 235 mm. It’s quite similar to the size of a CD case. One of the CD cover illustrations introduced in this book was chosen for the coverpage. It shows a girl listening to the artist’s song with headphones. From her facial expression and the whole impression of the art, it’s easy to imagine what kind of songs are inside. The vivid colors will attract our eyes. This is a perfect illustration for the cover page of this book.

“Travel sickness” is a CD BOX that contains 8 different artists’ CDs. It just looks very interesting with 8 CDs line up in a box. Also, each CD has a butterfly on it with different colors and shapes. They’re lined up in the wooden box one by one so that it looks like specimens of butterflies.

“Mika: Various” is created based on Mika and his sister Yasmine’s ideas and illustrations. The very cute and colorful characters give us a really good impression. A CD cover designed and created by the musician would give us a good image of the music.

“Hajimete no Yano Akiko” catches our eye with a very simple design. The title “Hajimete” (meaning “for the first time”), is expressed by pure white color. It has used only one white color but another shade of white, which can be seen from the cut-off shape, makes it beautiful and interesting.

Attached to “Mr. Children HOME TOUR 2007” is a puzzle. Each piece has a different shape, such as human, music notes or plants with their messages for each song. You can actually break the pieces apart and do the puzzle. It’s not only visually interesting but also you can actually touch and move it. It’s a fun and unique art.

These works I introduced today are only a few works from the book, which contains a lot of collages, graphics and other kinds of art. CD and DVD covers, and the package designs, are very important for us to learn the messages of the songs. This book will make us think that even the cover designs might change the images and impressions of the songs.

Musikraphics
Publisher: viction:ary
Specification: 256 pages
Language: English
Release: August, 2008
ISBN: 978-9889822972

Text: Asami Miyamura
Translation: Maki Otomo