RESEARCH

A rave is an organised dance party at a nightclub, outdoor festival, warehouse, or other private property typically featuring performances by DJs, playing a seamless flow of electronic dance music. DJs at rave events play electronic dance music on vinyl, CDs and digital audio. 
Raves became popular in the 1980's with the birth of the music genre Acid House. 

80s and 90s rave culture is inspired by psychedelia as well as the rise in popularity recreational drugs such as ecstasy. Rave is symbolically linked to the smiley face, associating with gurning faces and the release of serotonin in the brain making people feel a sense of happiness. The symbol was first used by Danny Rampling in a club flyer for his club Shoom. People in this scene also followed a distinct unique style, oversized t-shirts, neon colours, sports clothing, shell suits. People took part in free and illegal raves in order to fight authority and get away from their problems. The culture started out originally free raves but with the rise of super clubs in places like Ibiza raving culture became popular and still is around today. The movement relied heavily on strong graphic design in their posters to advertise events. The design paved a new type of music culture which was less about physical album copies but hearing a song once and not knowing its name.

Acid House
In the mid to late 1980s, a wave of psychedelic and other electronic dance music, most notably acid house music, emerged from acid house music parties in the mid-to-late 1980s in the Chicago area in the United States. After Chicago acid house artists began experiencing overseas success, acid house quickly spread and caught on in the United Kingdom within clubs, warehouses and free-parties, first in Manchester in the mid-1980s and then later in London. In the late 1980s, the word "rave" was adopted to describe the subculture that grew out of the acid house movement. Activities were related to the party atmosphere of Ibiza, a Mediterranean island in Spain, frequented by British, Italian, Greek, Irish and German youth on vacation, who would hold raves and dance parties.


Vinyl
In recent years the vinyl has had a renaissance and has become popular again,  2017 was the highest year for vinyl sales since 1991 according to Lilly Puckett from the Fader. this has brought back the concept of an album as an object and making buying music a more valuable experience again. ‘although vinyl lost its status as Britain’s leading albums format as long ago as 1985 and thus looked set for a permanent decline, sales of vinyl LPs rose year on year by 43.7 per cent in 2011.’(Richard Osbourne, Vinyl: a history of the analogue record )  Vinyl has gone from produced for the massed to a luxury item in recent years. This can be put down to the fact that music has become very easily available thanks to streaming online, but buying a vinyl is a physical thing that requires effort to play, not just pressing a button. To physically hold an album has become a luxury. People buy a vinyl of an artist they think is really special as they are expensive to buy and require effort to play. 

With all good subcultures come a strong artistic culture and so along with the music was artwork. I found my a collection of rave posters and interesting designs on the the internet and instagram in order to get some inspiration for the Mangoes and Melons poster.