The Modern Age
Capstone, 2018 | 11 x 14 " Book
InDesign / Photoshop / Lightroom / Bookbinding
This project is a 160 page book that archives 21st century rock bands in the middle of their careers. These bands are Arcade Fire, The Strokes, and Radiohead.
Rock n’ roll is a genre that developed as early as the 1950s and has grown and progressed to become more than just a genre- but a culture and a revolution. Since its beginning, we’ve praised the icons that made it great. Think the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie. These are some of the many musicians that we learn about in volume I of our hypothetical history of Rock textbook.
What I was interested in was— what would we see in volume II? When beginning this project, I studied the way we archive bands’ past— through museums, coffee table books, documentaries, etcetera. But we don’t really archive things in the present, or things that look towards the future.
I decided to focus my project on rock bands that I think we’ll still be talking about in 30 years. My main requirement for this was the epic factor—who has taken the most risks, developed die hard fan bases, pushed boundaries in the music industry. The three bands I chose to focus on really represent this. These are some of the influencers of the 21st century that are redefining what it means to be a rock musician.
I wanted to do this project as a love letter to music. My goal was to make this book as epic as the bands that it was documenting—monumental size is a part of that.
I also wanted to design a grid that broke boundaries itself, in homage to the groundbreaking work these bands do. A rockstar’s life is messy, big, loud, and not always polite. I wanted the layout and pacing of this book to reflect this. So you have to literally turn the book in your hands to to a new perspective to read captions. Some pages are filled with large photos that overwhelm you, and then others contain more negative space and smaller, more intimate snapshots, kind of representing the spontaneous lifestyle of a rockstar.
