Floppy Record by Roman Mars
Roman Mars is a long-time fan of Beauty Pill. He was talking with singer/guitarist/producer Chad Clark about the band’s latest 12-inch single, Instant Night, which features a lovely translucent design (both a clear record and a clear sleeve. In the course of conversation, another classic record design came up: the best-selling 12-inch of all time.
Blue Monday by New Order might not sound familiar by name, but you will know it when you hear it. It came out in 1983, featured a new, high-tech sound that is still bouncing around today. Factory Records designer Peter Saville designed the the album, inspired by the floppy disk, which may seem dated now, but seemed futuristic at the time.
Saville was a meticulous designer, and insisted on a die-cut on the album cover to mimic the hole in a floppy design, suggesting (accidentally or intentionally) there was data inside. It was so expensive to produce, the label reportedly ended up losing money on sales.
This wasn’t an intentional choice, just a product of the design and the times — it’s likely no one was paying close enough attention to the financials. One assumes that eventually they figured out how to make these profitable, but there’s something beautiful about the way it defies the expectation that music is art mainly designed to make money.
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Re: Mini Stories episode 13. I hope the design of that dorm can be changed. The idea of living in a small space is bad enough but a small space with no window gives me physical shivers of claustrophobia! The other bad idea is that making the individual rooms so unappealing as to force the students into the common areas sounds logical but doesn’t work in practice. I had friends who lived in a subsidized co-housing community in Fairfax. It was designed for single moms and for elderly residents. (They were supposed to mix and be good for each other. That didn’t work. The elderly residents from the four buildings mutinied and banded together in one building.) The rooms for the individuals were tiny and once again the idea was to push everyone to use the common living room and kitchen. It didn’t really work well. I believe that good and thoughtful design can create spaces that can encourage certain human behaviors but this idea of making individual private rooms too small to force people out into the open is not good or thoughtful.
On the Jazz paper cup design, I just had to let you know that my high school graduating class of 1972 chose that turquoise-blue and purple as our colors.
More spacious and with more options to explore outside than my accommodation in Antarctica, Not sure what the problem is.
Looking at the jazzy cup design makes me wonder if Gina Ekiss is left-handed….
The strokes in the design seem difficult for me (a right handed person) to recreate!
Roman misunderstood the term “subway” to mean underground trains, which would have been incredibly inefficient for the short distances involved. It’s obvious that the “subway” was just and underground pedestrian tunnel. Besides the conventional contemporary meaning of the word, part of the confusion probably stemmed from the story reference to “move books at high speed,” but this was most likely done with carts.
that the record label lost money on blue monday isn’t correct–they just made VERY little. and the label quickly altered subsequent pressings to recoup costs more quickly. any record collector pretty much knows this story and has seen the iterations. the iterations are actually as much a part of the story, too.
you can find this info lots of places, but i will link you to the discogs listing as just one example.
You can see the subway in the movie “advise and consent”
Are there ANY building codes in USA / California? It’s easy to see that building is a death trap in a fire. Look at length of the exit paths from the central rooms to the stairwells. Then imagine the crowd of students trying to access a stairwell – but there are doors on both sides of the top landing, so opening a door pushes into people already on the stairs and coming into the stairwell on the other side. This design wouldn’t get approved in Australia. Oh, and habitable rooms (ie ones people use) have to have natural light, openable windows and natural ventilation in Oz too. Also, the complete lack of consideration for disabled. Will they miraculously carry their wheelchairs down the stairs in a fire? Can they even access the building at all?
I was surprised by the assertions about the 12-inch recording being the “most popular 12-inch of all time.” Maybe I misunderstood and it was said it was the most popular 12-inch “single,” or something like that. But having thrived through that era I can confidently say that neither I nor anyone I’ve checked with has any idea about “Blue Monday.” No one I know has ever heard of it or recognizes it. And saying it was the most popular…let’s say, 12-inch single…is like saying, well, like saying something that very very few people have ever heard of is the most popular thing in its class.
Oh, and I love the podcast…other than this one.
And although I’ve been in hundreds of coffee shops, I don’t think I’ve ever seen the “jazz cup.” Maybe I need to get out more.
When listening to the Jazz design segment I got excited when you mentioned my home town where Imperial cup was located. Imperial cup was in Kenton Ohio, not Canton. This is a common mixup sadly. The company is now named International paper. Great program though.
I’d love to hear a 1.2 version about the dorm, particularly the comparison to jails. There are actually minimum size requirements per state for single and double cells. And access to light and air. Lately, some of the larger jail systems (LA, Wayne, Cook County and NYC) are undergoing a reform with ew buildings. Recommendation and requirements reach the level of access to daylight and views (i.e. a window in the cell not just a view from the cell through a room to another window).
As a justice architect, I’d also love to see a crossover with Earhustle about jail and prison buildings. But that’s a whole new level of niche nerdiness.