it’s time

The album that i’ve been listening to over and over again recently :-)

It’s been a really long wait, to quote what a friend said earlier: “i haven’t felt the excitement of buying a music album for the longest time!”. Love almost all the songs. Current favourites are ‘Time and Tide’, ‘Fool’s Kingdom’ and ‘It’s Time’. i said ‘almost’ because i can’t seem to have the patience to finish listening to ‘A Voice Within’, caught myself clicking the song away a few times when it was still half way through playing.

Next, the packaging! It’s no secret about my passion for types. So the moment when i opened up the pack, saw the big types within, i love it already. Also, i love the small details and design like black vanish (type) on black cover, irregular die-cut shape (to hold the disk), and different papers used within the booklet. But being a freak with serious occupational habit, i squirmed* a little (ok... a lot) when i saw the content page of the booklet.

Obviously, the designer doesn’t care about using proper typographic apostrophe and inconsistent kerning even though these are big types. Also, the numberings are too close to the spine... but no designer could have overlooked this, maybe it was done purposely? Anyway, it looked like a mistake even if it is. And i don’t understand the underscore used for ‘It’s time_yanzi’, was it meant to be a design element?

Garamond lookalike typeface: “Hello? We come in stylistic ligatures too. It’s embarrassing to be seen like this when we’re set this big.”

Hyphen: “Argh! Why am i always made to go in between these non-hyphenated words. Let En-dash do his own job instead, will you?”

Full Stop: “They’re using me in all the wrong places too!”

Word Spacing: “They stretched and squeezed me whenever they like, it’s hideous!”

Paragraph: “We prefer to be set in hanging punctuation please... if you don’t mind.”

(Maybe this is more of a personal preference, but don’t you think it looked so much neater?)

Since we’re at it, let’s take a look at the previous album... i remembered there was something about the typeface that made me uncomfortable when i first saw it too.

Check out the typeface used – Gill Sans. It is never my favourite, but don’t get me wrong, this is not the reason why i am picking on it. This album was shot in Egypt, with the famous pyramids as backdrop. The simple triangular lines of the pyramid gives it a minimal and graphical look, as if conveying a clear and definite message. Gill Sans, on the other hand, a typeface that i think works better for children’s storybooks. (Even though it’s the corporate typeface for many big brands – British Railways, BBC, Saab, MasterCard... and (tadah!) Toy Story etc...)

My version. Not the best, i’m just replacing it with Helvetica**, and i think it’s already way better than the cutesy Gill Sans.

* It happened to me all the time and there is by no means i’m picking on this particular album.

** Note to self: need to spend more time on real work, Helvetica will do.