Supersonic: Visuals For Music [Book Review]

Supersonic presents over 300 striking pages of today’s best-designed music products with a focus on Independent, Alternative Rock and Electronica. In addition to the abundance of visuals, the book also features interviews with first-class designers and companies who create outstanding work for the music industry.

Supersonic’s cover features a large black and white swirl with a strong red bolt, positioned like a dart, coming from its centre. The cover illustration is almost Op-art in nature and when I picked Supersonic up off the shelf I had assumed it would contain something very different. It isn’t until you look through the book itself that you realise it’s actually packed full of impressive, glossy work related to the Music industry.

The large format of this book holds up well thanks to its strong spine and hardback cover. The choice of paper stock is of excellent quality and a good weight, too. Page spreads sit open and flat on your desk. After reviewing multiple books, I’ve noticed this is a rare occurrence.

The publishers, Die Gestalten, have carefully placed the artwork on the page with the full intention of maximising the size for the reader. Browsing the spread layouts is a pleasing experience, as they change from 4-up grids to full-page hero shots. Design books don’t often dedicate this much real estate to single pieces of artwork and it really works here as the examples are all of superior quality.

Supersonic features all the formats you might expect to see in relation to the Music industry: CD packaging, poster illustrations and screen prints. The big size allows for complete booklet designs to be presented open and flat across the spreads, and poster art can even be placed on the same page too. This gives the reader a much more complete and wider view of all the rollout involved in each release.

Some of my favourite work in Supersonic comes from Designers such as Büro Destruct, Form® UK, Invisible Creature and Rinzen.

I wonder how many people might have made assumptions about this book based on the cover alone and chosen not to pick it up at all. Ultimately that would have been a loss, as Supersonic is jam-packed with high-quality music art that provides instant inspiration.

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About The Reviewer

James Santilli is a Digital Designer from Sydney, Australia. Designer's Bookshelf was born from his passion for design books. By curating books on the Bookshelf, he hopes to help fellow designers fill their collections with the best quality titles.

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