BLACK THOUGHTS

posted by James Reel

    One reason I haven’t posted in a few days is that I’m busy cataloguing KUAT’s next batch of new CDs, which will be scattered through the May schedule. I’m still working my way through them, but I’ll pause long enough to share with you the greatest frustration of the process: writing the catalog number on the disc booklet.
    A trivial task, right? Just take my government-issued Sharpie fine-point marker and jot four numerals onto the laminated paper, so we know where to find the disc on the shelf. (They’re numbered in order of acquisition; this group brings us up to CD number 4861.) Problem: Record companies have succumbed to a mania for black cover designs.
    And it seems that the higher the quality of the production and packaging, the more likely that the cover will be awash in black ink. Harmonia Mundi is the prime offender, but many other labels follow suit. Black suggests elegance and seriousness of purpose, I suppose, and it’s the one color that will come back from the printer pretty much the way it looks on the designer’s computer screen.
    This may have started back in the 1970s, with those ubiquitous Christian Steiner portraits of pianists in black pullovers, nestled up against their instruments; all you could see were their faces, hands, keyboards, and sometimes piano strings. The images were arresting, if predictable after a while.
    Black does often provide the basis of a striking cover design, but come on, guys, black is so ’90s. Help consumers out with something brighter and more consistently eye-catching, and help me out with colors that are easier to write on. (Yes, I know, I could use white ink, but we don’t have any white Sharpies in the supply room, and yellow or pink highlighters won’t do the job.)
    I never thought I’d say this, but I miss those Musical Heritage Society LP jackets from the 1960s and ’70s. They looked very much like the labels on the cans and boxes of “generic” food sold at bargain prices 30 years ago: simple black type on an all white background. MHS would position the type on the right, run a thick, vertical column rule a little off center, and on the left plop some icky public-domain line art. Cheap, but effective. After all, MHS was a mail-order company, and didn’t have to make fancy covers that would attract browsers at the retail bins.
    Best of all, they were easy to write on.