Challenge & Solution

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.