A sleeve system for a label with no budget

Nachtvlinder puts out six to eight records a year and could not pay a designer for each sleeve. They asked for something they could run themselves.

Four shapes and some rules

We drew four shapes and wrote a page of rules for combining them. Each sleeve uses two shapes, never the same pair twice, in red and blue only.

The catalogue number decides the order, so nobody has to make a design decision at two in the morning before a pressing deadline.

Six records later

The label has released six records on the system since. We were not involved in any of them.

Every sleeve looks like it belongs on the same shelf, and that was the brief.

We checked in after a year and changed one rule: the triangle can now point down.