Project

The necessity of documenting popular culture in recent years and the debate about whether it is worth documenting is an emerging issue in global academic society. Popular culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, and images that encompass the mainstream of any given culture. Popular culture is generally criticized and disapproved of as superficial, consumerist, sensational, and corrupted by other non-mainstream cultural currents. Beginning in 2001, the collection of all types of Persian records and research into the Persian record industry began as the Iran: RPM project.
Record sleeve production became prevalent with the creation of vinyl in 1959 and survived until 1974. In 1975, the industry became outdated due to the emergence and proliferation of cassettes and the increase in taxes on domestic music records. Since the music record production and archive industries are still prominent in many countries, the main purpose of this project — a joint project by ABBookness and StudioKargah — was to keep a record of the industry’s blurred history of graphic design in Iran in order to pave the way for future studies. This project was compiled and edited by Ali Bakhtiari, designed by Peyman Pourhossein, and laid out by Maryam Ronagh and Sanaz Soltani, respectively.

Volume 1
Since the mid-19th century — with the emergence of print technology, photography, and cinema — Iranian popular culture enhanced its output of visual documentation. Cinema’s influence since the mid-1930s is of particular significance due to its extreme popularity. The attention drawn to pop music, particularly within the movies, augmented the importance of Persian film soundtracks. When released, these soundtracks included picture postcards and along with records, until the popularization of projectors and the introduction of television. 
The presentation of music records is highly important from a sociological point of view. Therefore, the first volume of this project (published in October 2012) contains a collection of Persian soundtrack record sleeves from 1965 to 1974. The graphic design of the book is inspired by the visual resources and illustration methods for movie advertisements in their golden years. The dividers of the book classify the record sleeve images based on their production year and combine pictures of the sleeves of that year with numbers. These designs resembles the structure of film posters from the 1950s to 1970s — monochrome collages with irregular and often pointed clippings. Inspired by 1960s op art and the way a record spins, the book cover is composed of a transparent spinning record which enables the reader to play with the book title. 

Volume 2
Although the main priority of this project is to document the music productions and the graphics associated with them, it also aims to record a more comprehensive history of that context. Therefore, the second volume, titled “a complete collection of the music records of Kanoon (the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults)”, accompanied by a detailed history of Kanoon’s activities and products such as publications, movie centers, and libraries was published in March 2014.
The main idea for this book’s graphic design is to reproduce pictures based on Kanoon productions, in an attempt to maintain Kanoon graphic studio’s attitude towards children and adolescents at that period. Recreation of domestic and national visual resources with an approach to “Kanoonize” them, along with familiarization with the new methods of bookmaking and presentation of cultural and recreational products through Kanoon designers’ travels abroad and their visits to specialized exhibitions developed an educated visual taste in Kanoon. Incorporating sheets in different sizes and shapes and providing illustrations of some Iranian tales, gives a sequential narrative style to the dividers of the book. This type of visual narration, following design, is one of the most successful products of Pop Art Centre in the series of Kanoon story records. This book’s cover design attempts to use a familiar and local material (flower and bird) and a traditional illustration method (Muraqqa) in a “Kanoonized” manner.