rave on

rave on . A definite language in which design representation and visual representation are inextricable…

Art Chantry (art@artchantry.com ):

When the early rave cards first emerged back in the 80′s, the ‘design culture’ was shocked. It was the first really prominent explosion of popular graphic design totally created on computers – by kids for other kids advertising illegal underground dance ‘raves’. They were the portent of the future, the harbinger of what we were going to be flooded by over the next two decades.

The little things were crazy. They were little explosions of color and image and (really primitive) typography that were jumbled together on tiny pieces of paper and handed out anonymous on street corners. In fact, almost my entire sizable collection of rave cards I found one by one on sidewalks were folks tossed them away. They looked like a dose of ‘bad acid’ pretending to be litter.

The ‘fine design culture’ HATED them. In fact, there articles published in mainstream design magazines deriding them as “ugly and stupid.” However, they never knew what they were looking at.

It’s fun to go back and look at them in some sort of consecutive order. They depict a population first encountering a new technology (the computer) and learning to use it. Almost card by card you can see the slow mastery of what a computer can do and what graphic design language is about. Bit by bit it progresses until the cards today are sophisticated tour-de forces of graphic wisdom and underground sophistication. It’s a great story to “read” as you look at these old cards. It’s the story of how a culture absorbs and assimilates technology.

This card I show here is an extremely recent rave card (i found it about a year ago) from down this way in Tacoma – not exactly the hotbed of rave culture. In fact, the idea that there were still raves being conducted in a place like Tacoma, so many years after the phenom had faded from popularity, speaks to how this design language works. It often takes decades for the message to finally work it’s way entirely through the culture we live in. Hipster kids in Tacoma are so out of it that they think these rave things are cool. Go figger.

This is a great little card, with full color and die-cuts and great photography. The typography is still lousy. But, lousy type is sort a graphic standard for rave cards. In reality, it wouldn’t look right,

dn’t look like a rave card if the type was too good. Just the facts, Jack.

I have rave cards in my collection that are designed by actual trained graphic designers! These cards have sophisticated printing, sophisticated knowledgeable production and excellent typography. And you know what? They suck. They suck bad. Real graphic designers can’t do a rave card. They don’t know how to speak the language.

And that’s the truth.