Articles — record awards

Record awards in their earliest days were pretty plain, starting with simple dark-stained wood framed affairs with white matte boards in the 60s and early 70s. The period of 1975 thru the mid-80s brought silver and gold painted frames and charcoal-colored mattes. This was followed by a graduation to some pretty pedestrian black plastic-covered frame/black matte awards from the mid-80s through late 90s.   Just before the millennium, however, the RIAA loosened up its' previously strict design standards. This opened up the creative floodgates for award designers, who responded with an explosion of new designs. The companies that designed these new award...