Wednesday, March 07, 2007

ptr svll's lphbt


Sure, it's a bit old hat. Fans of New Order and Factory records have long been aware of Peter Saville's distinctive design work, but here's an opportunity to see the (in)famous "color alphabet" in motion. I'm really not sure what this short clip was designed for but try and see how many words and phrases you can find in these 9 seconds.

Don't know how to decode the color alphabet? Torbjorn Ivarsson (posting on the Ceremony-Digest listserve way back in 1997)explains that you need to look at New Order's "Power Corruption & Lies":

"To decode the wheel, use only the outer two rings. You could divide the outer two rings into full colour, various on green, and various on yellow. The inner segments appear to be meaningless. Start with the full colour sections, the first of which will be the green one... This is 'A'. Work your way clockwise naming each colour the next letter. There are exactly 26 segments around the disc. From 'Z' work back into the full colours, the first of which is '1'. This means that the full green segment is either 'A' or '1', and the colour for 'I' is also that for '9'.

You should be able to decode the squares now. Start with the 5 on the front of Power Corruption & Lies, and you will find (if you have the vinyl) that the first 4 squares spell 'FACT' then next square is divided into two, with the lower half being '7' and the upper half being '5'. Therefore the code is 'FACT 75' which is the Factory number for this release. The code for the CD front cover is 'FACD 75'."

So, bust our your LP and start decoding! What? You don't have one? Do I have to do all the work for you?

No comments: