Ibero-American 1980s Rock Album Cover Design

A Comparative Study

Abstract

During the 1980s, post-punk and new wave American and British rock bands gained visibility among young people in Western major urban centres. Influenced by them, countless rock bands appeared in Ibero-American cities such as São Paulo (Brazil), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Mexico City (Mexico), and Madrid (Spain). The aesthetic experimentation observed in the musical universe, with songs mixing rock’n’roll with punk rock, new wave, and regional styles can also be perceived in many of those bands’ album covers, with compositions that break up with canonical design rules. After a brief historical and cultural contextualization, this article presents the results of a research that investigated to what degree Brazilian, Argentinian, Mexican and Spanish 1980’s rock covers shared the same visual characteristics. To this end, design theories on visual language and typography were employed, complemented by observation and examination of selected album covers.

Keywords: design culture; postmodernism; transnational design; graphic memory; 1980s rock / cultura del design; postmodernismo; design transnazionale; memoria grafica; rock degli anni 1980