TADOMA RECORDS

Tadoma is a small, independent Greek label that specializes in progressive rock. They asked me to design their first logo and the first two album covers and CD cases: Etidorhpa by Vault of Blossomed Ropes, Nensha by Nikos Fokas, and Arve Henriksen.

Regarding the logo: Tadoma is a communication method used by deaf-blind people that involves using their hands to feel the other person’s facial movements. Therefore, the hand was an essential element that I had to include. The figure of the hand was inspired by “The Creation of Adam.” Old label logos served as a starting point for inspiration, and I wanted to achieve a feeling-aesthetic similar to theirs. That’s why the logotype is in a rectangular shape with bold lines. In the end, the effect of the circles creating the mark was added to induce a vintage feel, and they also resembled a vinyl record. For the two CD cases, a custom trifold case was designed from scratch. We wanted to avoid using plastic cases for environmental reasons, and the case design was also meant to add to the premium quality of the product. In the long run, a custom vinyl case is also planned to be designed.

Etidorhpa (or, the End of the Earth: The Strange History of a Mysterious Being and the Account of a Remarkable Journey) is one of the first scifi books ever written, dating back to 1895. The keyboardist had one of the first-ever releases of the book from 1909, so the main inspiration came from some small illustrations in the book. Additionally, the CD logo is from the first page of the same book, which I digitized and edited in Illustrator. The artwork is a photo collage of close-up photos of rocks in a cave near Athens that an associate photographed, and then I edited them.

Nensha, also known as thoughtography, is the alleged ability to burn images onto photographic paper with one’s mind. With this concept in mind, I aimed to distress and blur the photos to the extent that the viewer can only vaguely discern their content. This effect was meant to evoke the impression that the musicians themselves had projected their images onto the paper, with each one overlapping and merging into the other.