OUGD406 - Cassette Design

OUGD406 - Cassette Design

When researching into Cassette and J-Card design, you see 2 different principles and approaches; Firstly, J-Cards which take the pre-existing album vinyl cover and display them simply on the cover with all the other relevant information on the panels, spine and inside flap. The second approach is when a graphic designer takes a bespoke approach to the J-Card, designing it as a sophisticated separate entity to the vinyl cover.

This first approach can be seen for the majority of albums. Looking at J-Cards for art rock albums, already iconic covers such as Peter Blake’s design for Sgt Pepper’s or Andy Warhol’s banana image for the Velvet Underground are utilised as full front covers concisely because they are such recognisable images, and to this effect, the rest of the design does not need to as sophisticated as it can rely on the established cover imagery. 

An example of a designer who takes a more thought out approach to the whole J-Card design would be Peter Saville. Known for, among other things, designing the iconic cover for Joy Divison’s ‘Unkown Pleasures’, an example of one of Saville’s more avant-garde J-Cards is the design for a cassette by New Order. Displaying full panelled black and white images and a cover which features a large experimental overlapping sans serif type design, this design looks to be concise and coherent as a a whole composition when unfolded and while it does display the track list and relevant information it doesn’t squash it in like other J-Card designs and instead uses white space with great success. Another example of why Peter Saville’s approach to cassette design is so well thought out is in the packaging where he utilises for example card envelopes and book like covers. Packaging like this ultimately make the cassette feel like a more covetable and innovative product and stands out from the standard cassette case.