Postmodern · 2004–present · Western Europe

Hauntology & Ghost Box Design

Also known as Hauntology, Ghost Box aesthetic, Hauntological 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.

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AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

Use it with care

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.

How it works

Invent an institution and dress every release as one volume of its series, after the front-cover grid of Penguin paperbacks, university course books and the numbered, faintly institutional sleeves of library music. Fix one cover template: a ruled strip at the top with the label roundel at left and the catalogue number at right, then a horizontal title band with the artist line, separated by thin rules. Change only the colour, the title and the picture, and let size and alignment drift a little from release to release.
Set the title large and bold in an old, plain grotesque such as Monotype Grotesque, rather than Helvetica, inside the Penguin-like horizontal band, and set back covers and booklets in Clarendon, with track lists, catalogue numbers and a footnoted quotation.
Build the picture as a clunky, eerie collage of found material (textbook and science diagrams, cut-out archive photographs, eyes, circles, triangles and dot grids, occult and science-fiction motifs) and either isolate it on the flat coloured field or run it full bleed beneath the title band.
Age the picture rather than the print: on the early sleeves the offset printing and flat colour are crisp, and the age sits in the grain and halftone of the archive photographs and, on single releases, in a corroded or overexposed display face. Keep misregistered overprints and worn paper for later sleeves such as Entropicalia and for Scarfolk's distressed parodies.
Make it familiar and slightly wrong: impersonate public-service modernism (school books, public information films and posters, television idents, library records) and let in a trace of the cosmic horror and pastoral uncanny of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, never as straight revival or as camp.

London: Ghost Box, the record label that the producer Jim Jupp and the graphic designer Julian House (a member of the design company Intro) established in 2004 and formally launched on 10 January 2005. In the mid-2000s the critics Simon Reynolds and Mark Fisher applied Jacques Derrida's term 'hauntology' (Specters of Marx, 1993) to the label and its circle.

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition: Isolated object characteristic
Modular grid characteristic
Collage & layering characteristic
Full bleed characteristic
Dynamic asymmetry occasional
Space & hierarchy: Repetition & rhythm characteristic
Single focal point characteristic
Generous white space characteristic
Typography: Grotesque & neo-grotesque defining
Slab serif occasional
Geometric sans occasional
Ornamented display occasional
Colour: Flat fields defining
Limited spot colours characteristic
Earth & mineral occasional
Light ground occasional
Form & shape: Geometric primitives characteristic
Naturalistic depiction characteristic
Non-representational occasional
Optical pattern occasional
Surface & texture: Grain & noise characteristic
Halftone & Ben-Day dots characteristic
Paper & letterpress bite characteristic
Misregistration & overprint occasional
Ornament: Restrained accents characteristic
Emblems & badges characteristic
Rules & bars characteristic
Cosmic & celestial occasional
Folk & sacred symbols occasional
Imagery: Found & vernacular imagery defining
Photomontage defining
Treated photography characteristic
Diagram & data characteristic
Straight photography occasional
Line illustration occasional
Medium & production: Offset printing characteristic
Motion & broadcast occasional
Web & CSS occasional
Tone & intent: Nostalgic & retro defining
Ironic & self-aware characteristic
Authoritative & institutional characteristic
Spiritual & sacred occasional
Utopian & idealistic occasional
Avoids: Gloss & highlights, Chrome & 3D render, Glitch, Gradients, 3D render, Script, Abundant decoration, Horror vacui, Iridescent & holographic

Palette

#efe9d8
#1e1b18
#f9a61a
#01b2de
#d51a21
#8e3419

Typefaces

Monotype Grotesque (MT Grotesque), the main face of the Ghost Box front covers, chosen over Helvetica
Clarendon (Bitstream's cut) on Ghost Box back covers and booklets
Period display faces on single releases within the template
ITC Avant Garde Gothic (Belbury Poly, From an Ancient Star), Albertus, Countdown and Eurostile
Jean Midolle's Alphabet Lapidaire Monstre, used for decorated capitals on The Transactional Dharma of Roj
Motter Tektura with Clarendon and Eurostile on The Belbury Circle's Outward Journeys
2017

Known for

Julian House, designer of the Ghost Box sleeves and recording artist as The Focus Group, Sketches and Spells
Ghost Box GBX002, 2005
Belbury Poly (Jim Jupp), Farmer's Angle (Ghost Box GBX001, a three-inch CD) and The Willows (GBX003, 2005), shown beside House's account of the 'Penguin paperback-style grid' that made the records 'feel like part of a series'
Belbury Poly, From an Ancient Star (Ghost Box GBX011, 2009), its title set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic
The Advisory Circle (Cate Brooks), From Out Here (Ghost Box GBX021, 2014), whose cover drew on 1970s computer magazines and music-education textbooks
Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (Warp, October 2009), House's collaboration with Broadcast, whose artwork and packaging he had designed before
Julian House, posters, studio ephemera and the film-within-a-film credit sequence for Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio
2012
Plone, Puzzlewood (Ghost Box GBX034, 2020), for which House looked at the posters of Tadanori Yokoo and Keiichi Tanaami, Push Pin Studios and Eduardo Paolozzi's Moonstrips Empire News
Frances Castle, all the sleeves for Clay Pipe Music
the label she founded in London in 2010, for themed records such as Gilroy Mere's The Green Line, a requiem for the Green Line buses, and the anonymous Tyneham House, on the requisitioned Dorset village; the label is often described as folkloric, pastoral, spectral and hauntological

Make something in this style

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