Secret 7 Initial Ideas

I decided to design a sleeve for Tame Impala's 'The Less I Know the Better' because I love the track and the band itself. There was no real debate as to which track to choose .

I began to generate some ideas surrounding the song title. I chose to work with this as my starting point rather than taking a more abstract approach as I felt that the idea of 'The Less I Know the Better' fits perfectly with the entire idea of Secret7 and the customers being unaware of the track they are purchasing. I came up with the ideas of using codes as this is a form of concealment of information. I looked at various codes; ancient greek codes, the caesars cipher (or shift), pig latin amongst others. However the odes which really caught my attention were the codes that Thieves in Southwest China use (shown below) and the 'hobo code' used throughout America at the beginning of the 20th century and throughout the Great Depression. (Read more here)

I considered either using some of these symbols within my record sleeve design or possibly producing my own set of symbols. However I felt that making my own alphabet code would make more sense as then with the help of a key anyone could decipher it. I have been working with letterpress in probably it's most simple form recently just typesetting basic passages of text. I want to begin working more experimentally with this process and felt that this brief could be the perfect time to do this. I will have access to a number of  non-letter glyphs to work into a code. I also feel that as Letterpress was the first way that humanity began to disseminate information the process itself essentially contradicts the title. Although this could be looked at as a negative I think that using a process so historic in the sharing of information to print a coded message is ironic in a sense and I think it will work well.

I considered using the song title typeset in latin as this was the beginnings of language in the same way letterpress was the beginnings of print. I decided against this to instead focus on the idea of using codes. I do like the use of letters within the design so I may incorporate an alphabet code such as the caesars cipher within my design.

I began to look at some practitioners who work with letterpress but struggled to find the kind of work I was after. I wanted to look at contemporary decorative letterpress work rather than work where the process was used in the way it was initially intended. Work by Nick at The Print Project was something that really inspired me. The below image really inspired my initial experiments with using letterpress in this way. 

I contacted Nick to see if I could go and visit his studio at some point and to tell him about the 'Disposable Society' exhibition that Goat Collective is curating.

I also checked out a book called 'Reinventing Letterpress' and found some other practitioners who work with letterpress in a contemporary way. 

I worked with metal type from various font families and made a code using these various glyphs, for example an 'L' is an exclamation mark.

The above pattern reads 'The Less I Know the Better' when applied to a simple key. I will be experimenting with different colours and may look at using gradients and overlays. I only used this red colour as I already had the ink rolled out for another print I was doing. I am pleased with the outcome of this experiment and intend to continue using this process.