Pen & Pixel

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Pen & Pixel is a graphic design company based in Houston , Texas . She became famous and infamous for designing the covers of numerous hip-hop albums, which helped shape the look of hip-hop in the 1990s. The company is closely tied to the widespread emergence of the bling bling aesthetic. The Billboard magazine called 2000 Pen & Pixel along with DJ Screw than the two beacons of the Houston hip-hop scene. Other companies that made similar impacts on the hip-hop aesthetic were Phunky Phat Graphics and Street Level Graphics .

history

The directors of the company, which was founded in 1992, are Aaron Brauch and Shawn Brauch, who was previously the art director for the rap label Rap-A-Lot . Pen & Pixel is particularly active for artists from the Dirty South , early customers included Master P and Tony Draper , and later Lyle Lovett , Selena, Dr. Dre , Three 6 Mafia . It was the official design studio of No Limit Records and also designed almost all of the releases of Cash Money , Hypnotize Minds and Suave House . In total, Pen & Pixel designed several thousand CD covers, together with the numerous imitators of the style, the style created by Pen & Pixel dominated the hip-hop magazines of the late 1990s.

Pen & Pixel were one of the first hip hop companies to consistently use Photoshop , making use of all the options the program offered. The Spin magazine described the Pen & Pixel style in 1997 as a computer-generated images beyond good and evil, which contrasted among other various motives by the large number of similar companies. For Rolling Stone the album cover for was Snoop Dogg's album Da Game Is to Be Sold to the ideal type of mass produced ghetto object d'art. By focusing on comparatively cheap computer graphics, Pen & Pixel plays an important role, especially for independent companies.

In 2005, Vibe magazine included a Juvenile cover by Pen & Pixel in its list of 10 unforgettable CD covers. In particular, the artist's floating face in the sky influenced numerous covers that came afterwards. Spin cites as examples a lowrider who was put on the bottom of a lake, rappers next to the Sphinx in Versace clothing next to a pimp in G-string thong, or two rappers playing dominoes on the moon. In the summer of 2001, Pen & Pixel designed a cover for the Houston rap group Inner City Hustlers with a picture of the exploding World Trade Center . After the 9/11 attacks, this earned them a visit from the FBI and the withdrawal of all covers.

The company also told Spin magazine its limits, ideas that were proposed to them but that they did not implement, such as a pregnant woman with a gun, racist violence, a jeep falling from the step of a woman, or crucified figures. While they did not want to show any exploded cars from the artist's rappers competition, two rappers successfully coaxed them with this motif. While Pen & Pixel began producing CD covers, they expanded the program to include the entire production environment: from the production of the actual CDs to the production of advertising flyers, videos and merchandising.

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Brad Tyer: Houston: A Hot Spot for Hip Hop , Billboard September 23, 2000 Vol. 112, No. 39 ISSN  0006-2510 p. 34
  2. ↑ Alonzo Westbrook: Hip hoptionary: the dictionary of hip-hop terminology Random House Digital, Inc., 2002 ISBN 0767909240 page 66
  3. ↑ a b c d Tony Green: Pixel Visions in: Spin , November 1997 Vol. 13, No. 8 ISSN  0886-3032 p. 46
  4. ↑ a b msjacks: Pen & Pixel: the aesthetic of an era , The Bitter Buffalo, May 19, 2010
  5. ↑ PR: Snoop Dogg in: Nathan Brackett, Christian David Hoard (ed.): The new Rolling Stone album guide , Christian David HoardSimon and Schuster, 2004 ISBN 0743201698 p. 755
  6. ↑ Amy Linden Deep Cover Vibe June 2005 Vol. 13, No. 7 ISSN  1070-4701 p. 138
  7. ↑ Jeff Chang: Don't Rock the Casbah Spin, December 2001 Vol. 17, No. 12 ISSN  0886-3032 p. 56
  8. ↑ Anonymous: Five Things Pen & Pixel will not put on an album cover Spin, December 1999 Vol. 15, No. 12 ISSN  0886-3032 p. 153

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