NEXT is an annual exhibit in which the work of graduating students of the Corcoran College is on display, so the works in this exhibit are part of a semester long thesis project from students of all majors. My project is about graphic design in popular music.
Since NEXT is a large project for senior students at my school, this has been divided in two parts. The first one consist in writing the thesis paper. My essay talks about the role of design when depicting our pop culture, especially through its music. In it I discuss that if we look back at the history of pop music, we can distinguish a particular aesthetic for almost any given time. Design is one of those things that is expected to be part of the vernacular that distinguish a period of time, and thanks to the work of designers today we have a visual clue of how these different periods of time looked aesthetically. I chose to talk about this topic because music is something almost anybody can relate to. Who does not remember the cover of his/her favorite music album? Graphic design in a figurative way has given and continues to construct the visual, the image; the aesthetic side of our popular culture. In my thesis paper I talked a lot more about this topic, and I use several album covers as examples of this link between design and culture. Fortunately I chose a topic I have enjoyed learning more about; which made the extensive writing not so daunting. The other part of this project, after finishing the thesis paper, consist of turning our writing into a publication; digital and print. For now we are only in the beginning states of the publication, so these below are some pictures of my paper and thumbnails of some possible design layouts.
Peter Verastegui 