Design in Oblivion.

A Lisa Lenovitz sketchbook page

If you’ve been reading these posts it’s probably clear we barely had any idea what we were doing. Tom, Dick, and I were just passionate music fans, slightly more motivated than some, caught up in the pop cultural fevers of our times. The passion and motivation motored us through the details of the things we were totally ignorant of, including graphic design.

Of all of us I was most interested so effectively I was Oblivion’s art director. (In bands during high school and college I was the one who was obsessed with our logo, how our name would look on the bass drum head, and fantasizing about our eventual album cover.) And Tom? Once I asked Tom why the original “Living Blues” Magazine looked so raw, so amateurish. He got a funny look on his face, and with no trace of irony said, “If it looked good it wouldn’t be the blues.” (He was probably right.)

For our first release Tom chose the photograph and the pressing plant helped us design the LP labels and pick the colors (remember, I already said we knew nothing). I bought a how-to book on print design from the college bookstore and did the (terrible) layout on a breadboard on my lap (as “The Oblivionettes”). I got a little smarter soon and enlisted artist friends to help out from then on (a couple of whom became stunningly world class designers), and a few more with our photography. There’s more in another post about how Lisa Lenovitz came to design our logo.

If you click here on the GRAPHIC DESIGN tag you’ll be able to read my occasional updates on the individual release graphics.