First Published in
Mark Farrow is the Pet Shop Boys’s – eh – pet designer, having been responsible for most of their album designs over the past 20 years. For the limited-edition of their latest offering, Yes, Farrow certainly responds in the affirmative.
Published through specialist company Vinyl Factory, the project was not forestalled by a brief or budget, allowing absolute creative freedom. With this in mind, Farrow has turned each track into an object of design.
The tick on the original CD cover is made up of eleven coloured squares, each one representing a track. For the limited-edition, each song and its instrumental version, was pressed as a 12-inch vinyl and packaged in its own coloured square. Making the original 2D design tangible, one can produce a huge tick by laying out the sleeves on the floor. A 12th white sleeve contains all the label copy, and a signed and numbered print.
The inner bags of the sleeves continued the graphic language. Coloured diamonds – or sideways squares – interlace black-and-white images of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. Letterforms made up of the same diamonds were also devised and turned into a font to create the identity for the band’s world tour.
All the sleeves fit into a smoked black Perspex box that closes with invisible magnetic catches. A gold-plated tick is mounted on the middle of the box.
