Subframe Recordings Cat. SF-001 to SF-118 System v4.2

Subframe

An electronic label with a hundred and eighteen releases and no sleeve photography. The Designers Republic dressed a racing game as a corporation, complete with subsidiaries and safety notices. None of it meant anything and all of it looked official. Same trick here.

Client
Fictional, self-initiated
Sector
Electronic music, independent label
Scope
Mark, catalogue system, sleeves, print, screen
Method
After The Designers Republic
Built
CSS and one generator
01

The mark

One word, split by colour rather than by space. The blue half is the operating part, which is the only joke the identity makes and it makes it once.

RECPUBDISTSYS

Primary lockup with the division stack

Split
After the third letter, always. The second half takes signal blue and the first stays ice.
Divisions
Four invented divisions appear beside the mark on corporate items. They have no legal existence and that is the point.
Ground
Near black only. There is no light version of the mark because there is no light version of the label.
Never
Never separate the halves with a space, a slash or a line break.
02

The catalogue block

Every release is issued rather than designed. A code, a format, a duration and a status, always in that order and always in the same place. Press the button to issue another.

Subframe SF / REC
Limited
SF087
Halo Wire
Fixed
The block's position, order and typesetting. Four fields, two columns, one rule above.
Issued
Catalogue number, format, duration, status. Three of the four are facts and the status is theatre.
Artwork
There is none. The grid, the reticle and the block are the sleeve, on all hundred and eighteen.
Why
A label releasing ten records a year cannot commission ten covers. It can run a system that never looks thin.
03

Colour

Near black, two greys and one blue that only ever marks the operative thing on a surface. The acid is a hazard colour and behaves like one: rare, and always a warning.

Ink#0A0C0FThe ground of every artefact. Not pure black, so it prints.
Ice#EAF2F9Type on ink. The only reading colour.
Steel#B9C4CELegends, grid lines and anything technical.
Signal#2769C6The operative element. One per surface, never two.
Hazard#C9F53AWarnings and limited runs. Appears on about one sleeve in nine.
04

Typography

A squared grotesque for anything a person reads and a monospace for anything a machine would have produced. The division between them is the whole voice of the label.

Catalogue
Chakra Petch 700
SF 087
Title
Chakra Petch 500
Halo Wire
Copy
Chakra Petch 400
Eleven tracks recorded over two winters in a room above a garage, mastered loud on purpose and pressed in an edition of three hundred.
Legend
Azeret Mono
FMT 12" · DUR 47:12 · STS ACTIVE
Rule
If a human wrote it, it is set in the grotesque. If a system produced it, it is set in the mono. Nothing sits in between.
Case
Mono is uppercase and tracked. The grotesque is sentence case except the catalogue number.
Numerals
Durations, codes and prices are tabular, because they are read in columns on the site.
05

Release series

Three sleeves from one year. Same grid, same block, same reticle. Only the issued values differ, which is what makes a shelf of them look like a catalogue rather than a pile.

SF 084, 087 and 091

06

Applications

The label centre keeps only the code. The pass keeps only the block. Nothing is redrawn, things are removed until the surface can hold what is left.

CatalogueArtistsShopRadio

118 releases,
no covers

Everything on the label, issued in order, from 2016 to now. Vinyl while it lasts, files always.

Browse catalogue
SF091Faultline12"
SF090NeraEP
SF089Two WintersLP
SF088Ghost Cell12"
SF087Halo WireLP
SF086Drift TestEP

Website

SF087
Halo Wire · Side A 33 RPM

Label centre, 100 mm

Subframe AAA
Bearer Crew Access All areas Issued SF / 4.2
SF-AAA-0412DOB 000 ZONE 1 2 3 4REV 07 CHK 8F2AEXP 12.27
Not transferable

Tour pass

07

What breaks it

The system survives because it looks issued rather than authored. Each of these makes it look authored again, and once one sleeve does, the other hundred and seventeen look thin.

×
Do not add artwork One illustrated sleeve makes the other hundred and seventeen look like they were skipped rather than systematised.
×
SF087
LIMITED · ACTIVE · NEW
Do not spend the hazard Acid on every sleeve stops meaning limited. It has to be rare or it is just a second brand colour.
×
AN ALBUM ABOUT
DISTANCE AND WINTER
AND NOT SLEEPING
Do not write copy in the mono The monospace means a machine produced it. A sentence in it is a lie the reader can feel without naming.
×
Subframe
Do not invert the ground On white the grid disappears, the steel legends vanish and the whole system turns into a wordmark on a page.