The Experience Music Project (9/19)

Note: Very photo-heavy post

I took the morning to go to the Experience Music Project museum in Seattle. I’m not usually one to go to museums, but figured since Seattle had a great music scene, the museum would most likely be a cool experience. Andddd I’m glad I went. Now for those who know me pretty well, I’m not too savvy with music… at all. Main stream is usually my scene, mostly because it’s just convenient. So the museum was a whole new experience for me. Exhibits for Nirvana, the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, and Jimi Hendrix, combined with a sound booth and sci-fi section, the museum was filled with gold. For me, being a music-newbie and more of a graphic-junkie, it was neat to just look at the design styles of the album covers, posters, ticket stubs, records, etc. A lot of the posters and flyers were handwritten and hand drawn, which showed just the raw talent of the artists and sheer sense of creativity running through these artists’ veins. It was really inspiring to see how they just took their ideas, and went with them. They didn’t worry about what others thought. They didn’t care if it was perfect. They just did it. Listening to Kurt Cobain talk about the history of Nirvana and hear him laugh about some of the stuff they did, some of the work they produced, showed that yeah.. it’s not always going to be perfect, and we will most likely laugh at it 5 years from now, but who cares. It’s more about the fact that the work displayed what you were thinking at the moment, what you were feeling at the moment, and that you went through with it. To me, that’s all that matters at times. During the emergence of rock, these bands went against the grain to pursue their passion, and I’m pretty sure most of us, if not all of us appreciate the risks they took.

I definitely came away from the museum feeling energized to create work (not music, don’t worry guys) and get back to designing for me. Not to mention the museum was great inspiration work for the Flat Rate Collaborate project a few of my fellow studio mates have been working on. Our current theme for this round is music. Can you say perfect timing?

Here are quite a few pictures to help you get a gist of some of the things I saw inside the museum.

Left: This display was to show how all sorts of bands are connected, whether it’s playing together, going on tour together, sharing band members, or whatever. It was crazy to see the levels of collaboration and overlap all these bands experienced. Right: Sculpture that consisted of about 700 instruments. Say whaaaat?

Left: Part of the Rolling Stones exhibit. The exhibition design of this museum was on point. Right: the book ‘Taking Punk to the Masses.’ Being the type nerd, I was pretty stoked about the typography and layout within the book. Not to mention the duck tape binding.

Left: Really enjoyed taking a look at all of the album covers for all of these bands. Genius work and so diverse!

Right: this picture was obviously a mistake, but I love how it turned out regardless.

Left: So much flair

Right: They had an entire exhibit dedicated to sound which let you test out different instruments and all the different ways to alternate the sound. I wasn’t sophisticated enough to figure the stations out though.