So what is Day For Night?

Day For Night originated in 1991 as a recording imprint and independent-projects label, based out of Santa Monica, California. Promoting multimedia while emphasizing a lightly-branded, personalized design style, Day For Night CD releases to date include works in contemporary music and new media released on CD, CD-R and the web.

In nearly-equal parts, the Day For Night Catalogue continues to offer an esoteric mix of creations — combining music, art, typography, design and literature. This imprint is not a traditional “record label,” – its commercial releases will be limited, over a course of time, to 100 total – while its push for to recruit new artists from the outside world is often shadowed by inner development goals – first, to release the full schedule of projects back-logged at this time, many of them still in the works. For this, Eric Scott occasionally reaches critical mass as Creative Director; every day, he shifts gears in his capacities as composer, producer, recording artist, designer, typographer, and author.

These endeavors also include software releases from sub-brand digital type foundry NIGHTfonts, which is currently designing experimental typefaces – as seen in some of Day For Night’s business communications – and for distribution via commercial outlets, for application in desktop publishing.

Day for night takes its name from a filmmaking term – creating the illusion of night-time in broad daylight by employing special lens filters. Within this term creative or technical misdirection is implicit – like any special effect that conceals or subverts reality. Eric refers to this, throughout his discussions of “Internet Theater,” one Day For Night’s “critical services” – as well as a personal design focus. One primary example of this is the self-initiated NIGHTlink Rail internet project, which first launched in 1997, and continues to evolve, slowly, as the Day For Night catalogue grows.

From its fictitious marketing campaign (“Take An Internet Journey By Rail – It Still Beats Walking.” and the mock train stations, NIGHTlink Rail becomes an emblematic parody of the label’s catalogue: CD project titles are also often referred to by name and, interchangeably, by catalogue number (“Day 001” through “Day 100”). This cryptic emphasis upon cataloguing and order also informs the schematic design of the NIGHTlink Rail Travel Planner – one that might easily be mistaken for a real subway map. The Station stops along this network also share and cross-brand Day For Night catalogue projects, amidst playful marketing “hype” banner ads that cover railway station walls like fly-bill ads.

Another similarity shadows the 1973 film of the same name, furthering a personal authoring style, as did the œuvre of director Francois Truffaut. Where Day for Night the film represented the filmmaker as the bemused subject of the same director’s own fiction, Eric compares this to his own continually “being at the heart of Day For Night’s big picture, and living inside many of the details as well.”

Real-world clients have approached and boarded Day For Night, demanding the finest in this brand of creative misdirection…from Imagine Television, Disney Online, Touchstone Television, to its inner Artist Projects network, Day For Night has consulted and delivered when even the most daunting levels of creative misdirection is in the design brief.

The sum of the label and its multimedia endeavors represent this artist’s vision – one that is largely self-contained, and occasionally self-referential – and one which Eric describes as part of his “personal search for an absolute truth about New Media.” Presenting a lexicon of sounds, textures and graphic possibilities, Day For Night consciously expresses its own subjective experience, as well as its human fallibility.