To house such an eclectic array of art, Patrick Fry, founder of CentreCentre tells us that nailing the sequence was key. “It was very important to establish a flow of images that felt connected and also in contrast,” says Patrick, “establishing a pace that keeps the viewer moving through the collection.” This flow is bookended with font and backmatter that frame and establish the “fun, DIY aesthetic and almost fanzine approach”, Patrick continues. Sleeve Notes opens with a black-and-white snap of the Crazy Beat Records shop, a creative reimagining of a music-crazy, misunderstood teen encountering sleeveless records, and a foreword from Kevan offering insight into the journey and lifespan of the artworks enclosed.
As the sleeves are photographed on black backgrounds to ensure visibility, Patrick says that they sought to add colour elsewhere, as seen with the baby pink front and backmatter pages, and the shock of 1970s-inspired burnt orange on the front cover. When it came to the title, “we wanted to evoke but not mimic the many forms of hand drawn bubble lettering inside the book”, Patrick says. The team looked through many possible fonts before landing on Studio Feixen’s suitably buoyant and suggestively retro Ease Full Rounded.
For both Patrick and Dominique, the sleeves aren’t just a niche area of overlooked, ‘outsider’ art, they represent a whole bygone era of analogue music fandom, once dictated by homemade mixtapes, fan-art and bootleg merch. When working on the project, Dominique says she “kept to the same high standards as I do for museums, libraries and archives”. She continues: “It’s important to me that collection items are treated equally regardless of their value financially, and as a cultural item I feel they should be collected and preserved.” In sum, Sleeve Notes is a gem of a book that pushes its audience to ponder both the vast visual history of music, and the personal stories behind the many hands that crafted each of these one-of-a-kind sleeves.
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