Eternal Dragonz is a record label based on Los Angeles. 8echno, a Seoul-based musician duo that consists of DJ Yesyes and Seesea released a mix tape through the label as part of their mix series. I was asked to design the artwork identity for the cassette tape cover.
The name of the mix series is Cola-tek Autobahn. ‘Cola-tek’ is a portmanteau of cola and discotheque — an oldschool yet affectionate Korean word meaning a daytime disco club and ‘Autobahn’ is a German highway known as roads without speed limit. The cassette tape contains the music that Korean youth in the 1980s used to dance to in Cola-tek and also ‘trot’, a type of K-pop music for middle-aged/elderly people. Some of them are hardcore-kind fast music, which goes with the Autobahn theme. In addition, in the highway rest area/service station in Korea, there are always stores selling mix cassette tapes (nowadays USB as well) with these style of music.
I took all these insider references and conceptually applied them into the visual identity with: overall retro and kitsch look in highly-saturated color scheme, glowing effect presenting the Cola-tek lightings, loud and messy maximalism layout matching with the music inside, and zoning-in perspective for the speedy feeling. The backside of the cover has short descriptions about people at Cola-tek and a part of the lyric of one song from the selection. I expressed the lyric text in a Karaoke screen style to show a exciting feeling of singing along. The background image is from the footage of the duo 8echno’s performance at one of the remained Cola-teks in Seoul.
This project has been selected for It’s Nice That’s monthly online showcase The Nice Gallery from over 6000 participants.
Nahyun Park is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary graphic designer and visual artist with more than 10 years of global careers. She specialises in detail-oriented visual identity craft based on conceptual and storytelling methodologies. She has directed strategic branding solutions for clients in the commercial and cultural industries by innovating original visual narrative across digital and physical medium. As an artist, she experiments with interactivity through various creative disciplines and hybrid forms.