Comments on: Aura revelations

By: Tim Razo

Tim Razo — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:46:13 +0000

Ahh this is great! I’m gonna have to pick up the book now for sure!

By: Andy Murray

Andy Murray — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 17:20:08 +0000

Dear Paul,
Sadly, (or maybe not), I haven’t seen anyone from Leeds Poly since I left there, apart from Jim Hutcheson, who was for a long time Art Director for Canongate Books, although if you ask ME he was always more of an illustrator…
He designs every other book cover in Scotland, and did the illustration for Steve Winwood’s first album, as well as covers for Cafe Jacques, who were managed by Bruce Findlay of Bruce’s Records (and latterly Zoom Records).
Jim also did the first Simple Minds album, now that I think of it..

Chris Lee was from Sturmister Newton in (I think) Devon, and I’m pretty sure he moved there.
No doubt all will come round again in FaceBookWorld and he will pop up in a Lifestyle feature on the South-West in a Designers’ Online Magazine …

Cheers.

By: Paul Gorman

Paul Gorman — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 16:26:57 +0000

Thanks for this R&M. Very important difference which I will seek to amend.
The Big Star guys are not too keen it seems – messing with the Tenn. flag doesn’t usually go down well in Memphis or thereabouts…

By: Rebecca and Mike

Rebecca and Mike — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:18:31 +0000

Hi there, it was interesting to see these Aura releases get an airing at last.

Speaking of typo detail, you guys might like to know that the image of the Big Star LP shown above, doesn’t quite match the original LP (maybe the image grabbed from the web for this blog is from a CD re-issue?) On the original LP the text is considerably smaller, and doesn’t interfere with any of the fireworks (one of which has been partially removed on the above pic to make way for the enlarged type). Doing a quick check also reveals the image is cropped a little differently on the original LP too.

Here’s an image that does come direct from the LP, and you can see the difference in type size. http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s682713.jpg Unfortunately however, it’s an incredibly small image, and whoever set it up has cropped into the LP quite a bit, so the overall image crop is still misleading! Still, we thought it was better than nothing…

By: Paul Gorman

Paul Gorman — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:49:53 +0000

You know Andy I kinda like it. You’ll recall how Aura was a pretty left-field label at a time when there were many of them but it helped them stand out because it was so distinctive. There was also something odd about the way its (half) tones clashed with the light tan label.
Where’s Chris Lee now?

By: Andy Murray

Andy Murray — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:23:26 +0000

The bloody awful typeface used for the Aura Records is called ‘Tonal’, and it is based on Clarendon.
It was devised as part of a Letraset new typeface competition, by Chris Lee, a classmate of mine in 1974 at Leeds Polytechnic Communication Design Dept.
Letraset did licence it from him, so he must have made a few bob from it over the years..

Cheers,
Andy.