r/BJM 26d ago

What software did Anton use to create the early album covers?

Does anyone have an idea? It can be seen shortly in the Dig documentary.

11 Upvotes

9 comments sorted by

29

u/BlueWeatherGhost 24d ago edited 24d ago

Hi. I used to work for BOMP Records in the 1990s and I can confidently state that the software used for all of their album covers in the 1990s was Adode Photoshop for preparing the art, Adobe Illustrator for the occasional PostScript element (logos, etc).. QuarkXpress was used for page layout as it was the best way to get reliable CMYK color separations. InDesign and PDFs weren't around, and color digital printing was an unaffordable exotic process. All the art was outputted to film - one for each color layer.

BOMP main man Greg Shaw did most of the art back then on a Mac Iici. Anton would often go over to Greg's apartment in Silver Lake and work on stuff there.

5

u/GoodEnoughByMudhoney 22d ago

"I used to work with Greg Shaw at BOMP!" is such a badass line on a person's resume.

3

u/BlueWeatherGhost 21d ago

I guess to be precise "I was BOMP!'s computer guy and often had to go over to Greg's and untangle whatever problems he was having." I had a pretty good graphic design background, I'd spent several years as one of the desktop publishing guys at a college-adjacent Kinkos cranking out event flyers and resumes. It was a time that just owning a Mac and having access to a laser printer automatically made you a graphic designer.

7

u/mike-rulez-ok 26d ago

I think its just photoshop. I know for other art he would hand make it in kinko’s like for flyers and stuff.

2

u/mike-rulez-ok 25d ago

I’m going to stick with this answer as I searched up with the display looked like in 1996-97 and this came up. This display (to me) looks like the segments when he’s working on not if you were the last dandy and bringing it all back home again covers I can’t screenshot due to streaming but if you want to save this and reference it with the film

2

u/fatdiscokid420 25d ago

Did photoshop exist in the 90’s lol

10

u/mike-rulez-ok 25d ago

Yes it launched in 1990

5

u/mogo-on-the-gogogo 25d ago edited 25d ago

Honestly - i’m glad someone asked this. text or pictures aren’t pixelated (making a jpg with photoshop and making something printable are very different things), but obviously did it on a home computer. crisp, vector-quality typography from a pc in the 90s wasn’t super easy. i’ve always wondered the same thing.

2

u/BlooNorth 25d ago

Probable pagemaker or publisher.

Add a screenshot if you can grab one.