As I prepare for going back to school and choosing a new focusing major of Graphic Design, studying various forms of fonts used to create typography artwork has become increasingly intriguing.

For the 51st Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy hired TBWA\Chiat\Day to produce a series of typographic illustrations of different musicians to promote the February 8, 2009 event.  The artists that were selected for the Grammy typography were Stevie Wonder, Rihanna, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Coldplay, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Lenny Kravitz.  Each of them were asked to provide a list of at least 15 songs that inspired their own creativity.  In return, each song title provided was colorfully incorporated into the graphic design, swirling around portraits of the individual musicians’ profiles.

Please enjoy a few favorites from the typography collection below, along with a choice track of each musicians’ originals and one song of inspiration from the personal list that was chosen.

Try out our free 70-516 and latest testking 000-979 training courses to get high flying success in final 650-177 & 642-813 exams; JN0-343 dumps is also very useful tool.

Idlewild always have a strange way of getting away it. It being a pop-rock cliche of staple-dynamics, melodic choruses that are always moments away from melancholia, and electric-guitar parts your mother still loves. Yet they always get away with it. Personally I know loads of the ‘kids’ down with Idlewild, and shamelessly too.

As a result you do step with trepidation when a new release comes out. Personally, nothing will ever beat ‘The Remote Part’ for me, and I’m sure that could be true with many others. 2009 full-length ‘Post Electric Blues’ starts off in ill-waters, as ‘Younger Than America’ just about crosses the line into cringeworthy. The problem with ‘Post Electric Blues’ is that for the first time the volume of embarrassing songs to absolute classics is considerably higher than on any previous L.P.. Sure; tracks such as ‘Readers & Writers’, ‘(The Night Will) Bring You Back To Life’, and ‘No Wiser’ are indeed excellent, but the L.P. on a whole leaves a worrying pang of disappointment.

So why am I still blogging on a mediocre album? Mainly because their earlier material has blown me away year after year, and some of their songs I can keep revisiting and falling in love with over, and over again. So this blog isn’t as much a feature on the downturn they’ve taken, but the artists they have been, and I have true faith in, that they could be.

Idlewild have an undefinable skill at making pop-rock worth listening to, and while touching on that with ‘Post Electric Blues’, looking back; songs such as ‘You Held the World in Your Arms’, ‘A Modern Way of Letting Go’, or ‘In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction’ really prove this point. They have a formula, they’re sticking to it, but every now and then, one gem will stick out so much you’ll fall in love.

Readers & Writers (from Post Electric Blues)
You Held the World in Your Arms (from The Remote Part)
Live in a Hiding Place (from The Remote Part)
A Modern Way of Letting Go (from The Remote Part)

Not too long ago, I saw Spiritualized perform live. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in Leamington Spa” were words Jason Pierce never thought he would ever say. And he never did. He didn’t even say hello when he walked on stage, which was fine because the crowd was treated to a five-minute introduction of fabulously flanged guitar work combined with distorted feedback as its partner in crime.

The night climaxed with a simultaneously brutal and gorgeous ‘Lay Back In The Sun’, which mixed loud shoegaze with gospel backing singers. Jason’s voice became an instrument fighting against guitar feedback, and the chant of “Good dope, good fun” became hypnotic.  The drummer drummed harder, a sound man came on stage to turn up the amp volume, and then the lights began to happen. A white light appeared from the darkness. It began as a small speck, the vanishing point in the distance, but it began to emerge. I wanted to follow the light, and that was when the strobe effects started, and my body was being invaded by pure joy. It was how I felt finding God would feel, and it was the second ‘religious’ experience of my life (the first being when I first heard Pavement’s ‘Rattled By The Rush’). However, this also happened at the end of ‘I Think I’m In Love’ and ‘Take Me To The Other Side’, and an atheist cannot find religion that many times. But it felt possible.

LISTEN: Lay Back In The Sun by Spiritualized
PHOTOGRAPHY: Iona Bateman