(B6) NIRVANA NEVERMIND

Nirvana "Nevermind"

Punk had been around for a while, and much of the music was beginning to sound too much alike. The rock ‘n’ roll genre of music was dying out and needed something new; this is when grunge arrived driven by bands like Nirvana. The album ‘Nevermind’ and its odd album cover design (Figure 3)  is what made grunge become mainstream and end up being extremely popular in the ’90s and early 2000s. The album’s design had quite a peculiar origin, the lead singer of the band, Kurt Cobain had the idea after watching a documentary on water births with their drummer David Grohl (May, T. 2018). Designer Robert Fisher considered this idea but, many of the stock photographs of water birthing, as can be predicted, were too graphic to have as an album cover and would be extremely expensive to license. Fisher then commissioned Kirk Weddle (photographer), who went on to take some bespoke images. Fisher went on to edit the chosen image by adding the fish hook and dollar bill. The name of the band in a narrow serif font which ultimately was Nirvana’s signature/ logo, the warped sans serif type of the album title to mimic the pool. The album was eye-catching and was a hit almost immediately, the edgy music and design was something different to the other microgenres of rock around in the ’90s. The music alone was very successful, but, with the aid of the design, it was evolutionary - (Taken from my CoP3 essay)

I thought this was a very relevant piece of research because this album and design was responsible for the beginning of grunge and is still an iconic reminder of the entire genre. We are wanting to do the same thing with our Alternative Metal branding.