Style combination · Contrasts

Hauntology × Post-Punk Record Sleeve

House names Peter Saville among his influences, but Saville's Factory sleeves quote one modernist or classical source per record, while Ghost Box invents a whole institution and dresses every release in its one template; choose a single quotation or a fictional series.

From the research on Hauntology & Ghost Box Design

Mix them and make something Hauntology Post-Punk Record Sleeve

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Post-Punk Record Sleeve, their arrangement from Post-Punk Record Sleeve, the finish from Hauntology. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Hauntology & Ghost Box Design Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

Type from Hauntology: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Colour from Hauntology: Flat fields
Limited spot colours
Form from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Non-representational
Naturalistic depiction
Composition from Post-Punk Record Sleeve: Single focal point
Isolated object
Surface from Hauntology: Grain & noise
Halftone & Ben-Day dots

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Hauntology

Daydream

Archivo; Hauntology used Monotype Grotesque (MT Grotesque), the main face of the Ghost Box front covers, chosen over Helvetica and Clarendon (Bitstream's cut) on Ghost Box back covers and booklets

Text · Post-Punk Record Sleeve

The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD. Instead of xerox collage, a sleeve became an art-directed object: one quoted or treated image (a pulsar plot, a Fantin-Latour still life, a Futurist poster, a misty photograph) on a quiet field or edge to edge, the band's name shrunk, coded or left off, riddles and catalogue numbers in its place, printed offset on textured, silver, gold or die-cut stock.

Space Mono; Post-Punk Record Sleeve used Peter Saville's colour-coded alphabet, one coloured block per letter, decoded by a wheel on the back of Power, Corruption & Lies (1983) and used for the title of Blue Monday and Small, ordered sans-serif capitals in the manner of Jan Tschichold's New Typography, which Saville took as his model from the 1978 Factory poster onwards

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Hauntology, with a counter-accent from Post-Punk Record Sleeve. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Hauntology & Ghost Box Design Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD)

#efe9d8 ground · 36%
#1e1b18 ink · 14%
#f9a61a accent · 18%
#01b2de accent · 14%
#b8963e accent · 10%
#d51a21 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe9d8;
  --ink: #1e1b18;
  --accent-1: #f9a61a;
  --accent-2: #01b2de;
  --accent-3: #b8963e;
  --accent-4: #d51a21;
  --font-display: "Archivo", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Space Mono", monospace;
}

Use it with care

Hauntology & Ghost Box Design: The Ghost Box sleeves and logo, Littler's Scarfolk images and Frances Castle's Clay Pipe sleeves are in copyright, and much of what they imitate (Penguin covers, government public information posters, textbook illustrations, archive photographs) has its own rights holders: build a new fictional institution from public-domain or licensed material rather than copying a Ghost Box sleeve or Penguin's trade dress.

Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD): The sleeves are in copyright, and several of their quoted images have their own authors, such as Harold Craft's pulsar plot and Bernard Pierre Wolff's photograph of the Appiani tomb: make a new quotation from a public-domain or licensed source rather than copying a Factory, Stiff or 4AD cover or its colour code.

The two styles

2004–present · Western Europe Hauntology & Ghost Box Design Sleeves and print that rebuild a misremembered British past from the public graphics of roughly 1958–1978. At Ghost Box, founded in London in 2004, Julian House gave every release one template after the Penguin paperback grid and library-music LPs: bold grotesque type in a ruled Penguin-style band over a single saturated colour field and an eerie collage of textbook, science and occult imagery. Reynolds and Fisher called it hauntology; Richard Littler's Scarfolk turned it into sinister public-information posters. 1977–1990 · Western Europe Post-Punk Record Sleeve (Stiff, Factory, 4AD) The record sleeves that British art-school designers made after punk, for independent labels and some majors: Barney Bubbles at Stiff, Malcolm Garrett for Buzzcocks, Peter Saville at Factory and 23 Envelope at 4AD. Instead of xerox collage, a sleeve became an art-directed object: one quoted or treated image (a pulsar plot, a Fantin-Latour still life, a Futurist poster, a misty photograph) on a quiet field or edge to edge, the band's name shrunk, coded or left off, riddles and catalogue numbers in its place, printed offset on textured, silver, gold or die-cut stock.

More combinations

With Hauntology

All 12 combinations with Hauntology

With Post-Punk Record Sleeve

All 14 combinations with Post-Punk Record Sleeve

Every style combination