Graphic Grooves: Dance Music and Design Since 1983

Musicians love to fall back on the old adage that their craft is “all about the music” (Justin Bieber whips that one out all the time), but it’s almost never solely about the audio frequencies coming out of your speaker. Many record labels put a lot of thought and effort into carefully designing logos, sleeves, and artwork for their releases, building iconic visual brands that listeners could recognize from a mile away.

In the past, imprints aimed to make their wax stand out to people browsing in physical record shops by plastering the records and sleeves with garish, eye-catching imagery, but these days, it’s more important to have one symbol or logo that can be duplicated and proliferated across many different media, from record sleeves to flyers to t-shirts and SoundCloud players. We put together a list of 15 labels with some of the most iconic artwork as a case study.

CUTTING RECORDS

R & S

STRICTLY RHYTHM

we used it

NERVOUS RECORDS

RADIKAL FEAR

POWER MUSIC/SEX MANIA

PERLON

MR. G

his epic Boiler Room set

TEMPA

HONEST JONS

Most Honest Jons records feature distinct artwork on their sleeves, but many of the recent ones were designed by the same artist: Will Bankhead. Bankhead, who heads The Trilogy Tapes and co-runs Hinge Finger with Joy Orbison, has contributed illustrations for many labels, including Hessle Audio, Anthony Naples’ Proibito label, and his own imprints. His most eye-catching and easily recognizable work for Honest Jons belong to the UK label’s Shangaan Electro series. Each record is decked out in a mostly yellow sleeve that looks like somebody’s pajamas.

FOOL’S GOLD

HEMLOCK RECORDINGS

PAN

JAMIE XX

We’re New Here

SKRILLEX

Recess Rolling Stone