#Coldplay album artwork code#
#Coldplay album artwork series#

Yet for graphic designers, two factors stand out amid this flurry of interest. Instead, a striking cover that has succeeded in exciting widespread comment - something that hasn't happened much since David Bowie donned a dress for the original cover of The Man Who Sold the World and McCartney-is-dead theorists subjected the Beatles' Abbey Road sleeve to forensic examination in the late 1960s. So: no oblique message announcing the overthrow of western governments and no coded references to the home addresses of EMI shareholders. On its website, the NME, the last of Britain's weekly pop music journals, takes a less highbrow view and likens the design to the 1990s computer game Tetris. The last column gives us 10101 or the letter Y.' The first letter in Coldplay's title is the letter X. Referring to the Coldplay graphic, he states: 'The first column of colours on the cover shows a black and grey block representing a 1, followed by a gap representing a zero, then three more blocks of colour giving three 1s. The letter X, for example, is represented by 10111, and Y by 10101.

#Coldplay album artwork series#

He identifies it as an example of a system devised in 1870 by Emile Baudot for telegraphists, where each letter of the alphabet is represented by a series of five 0s or 1s.

#Coldplay album artwork code#

The cover translates the album title into a binary code where each block of colour represents a 1 and a gap 0.'Дu Sautoy proceeds to decode the symbol. More recently, in the same newspaper's weekly science supplement, Marcus du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at Oxford, wrote gleefully: 'If you don't want me to spoil the excitement of working out Coldplay's new album cover, look away now. Is it phallic? Is it a coded celebrity portrait? Guys, guys - have you thought of asking: is it art?' To the NME and the websites apparently obsessed with this image, it is, however, a cross between the Da Vinci Code and Fermat's last theorem: the great brain-teaser of our time. They themselves cite 1940s mathematical abstraction. It's this graphic puzzle - rather than the 'design' - that is causing the sleeve to be subjected to the sort of scrutiny not normally given to contemporary album covers, or graphic design in general, for that matter.Д«lue Monday by New Order, designed by Peter Saville, Factory, 1983.ДЄs early as April, Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones noted: 'The designers, Mark Tappin and Simon Gofton, have created a digital logo which echoes every modernist school of painting from suprematism to De Stijl. And just as Saville did on his notorious floppy disk sleeve for New Order's 12-inch single 'Blue Monday' and his album cover for the same band's Power, Corruption and Lies, both from 1983, Tappin Gofton use an enigmatic colour code and invite the viewer to decipher its meaning. To render the Coldplay name and album title, Tappin Gofton use Albertus, a typeface Saville deployed to memorable effect on the cover of New Order's single 'Ceremony' in 1981. It has dark echoes of Peter Saville's epochal Factory covers. You wouldn't call it a classic, but it has an unexpected severity that lifts it above the anodyne and cosmeticised design currently favoured by multi-platinum selling artists. Their last album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, sold 11 million copies and it's easy to imagine EMI's shareholders forgiving Martin's lippiness if sales of X&Y exceed that figure. Middle class, privately educated and married to Hollywood royalty, he and his band generate enough income to equal the earnings of a small corporation. I think shareholders are the greatest evil of this modern world.' Martin is an unlikely candidate to announce the end of capitalism. Gwyneth Paltrow) responded by announcing: 'I don't really care about EMI. Lead singer Chris Martin (referred to in the UK tabloid press as Mr. Earlier this year, their British record label EMI was forced to issue a profits warning to its shareholders when the band delayed the release of X&Y. With the record industry's habitual love of hyperbole, Coldplay are being touted as the 'world's biggest band'. Their work for Coldplay's third album establishes them as a new force in contemporary music design. Until the appearance of their Coldplay sleeve, Tappin Gofton were best known for their 1960s-style 'agit-prop' cover for The Chemical Brothers album Push the Button. They have good pedigrees: Mark Tappin was at Blue Source, Simon Gofton at Tom Hingston Studio, both important studios in the UK music design scene. The Coldplay sleeve has been designed by hot new graphics duo Tappin Gofton. Odder still that the album cover in question - Coldplay's X&Y - should contain binary data as its central motif. X&Y by Coldplay, designed by Tappin Gofton, EMI, 2005.ДЄt a time when invisible data streams of binary information fed straight to our desktops are doing away with the need for album covers, it's odd to find a record sleeve as the subject of media comment and speculation.