[ X&Y ]

X&Y by coldplay is an album cover that is a sort of puzzle, using Baudot code this album cover is a graphical representation of the glyphs X&Y. Coldplay often use ambiguity to promote themselves however they don't take much consideration into what the design will look like as a tiny thumbnail. However this album cover does work as a thumbnail weather by choice or just by happy coincidence. This project will now explore what capabilities this album has as a moving image as thats where the future of covers looks to be heading.

The first step was to try and grasp an understanding of the code to see if the design could give any more clues to what it was as a moving image. The code is hard to understand and in the end The ambiguity and unknown aspect shouldn't be too obvious. This is because if everyone could understand the code then it wouldn't be strange at all, and people wouldn't show each other what the deciphered code was. It does though in my opinion need to be more obvious that it is a puzzle that needs figuring out.

Copying the design by using the original as a template was the easiest way to gain individual rectangles and squares to mess around with when it came to the moving image. The only problem with this album is the colour. It is too dark, as you will see on the screenshot of itunes below this does effect its legibility in thumbnail form. This meant that the colours needed to be designed brighter especially the background colour.

The finished copy on illustrator.

Using a slightly brighter colour to increase contrast between the blue and the black and to increase the designs overall legibility. 

 

Creating a simple gif of the shapes simply appearing. This was the first idea that the project executed and the results were good but the message of the puzzle was not there still so further development was necessary.