LP front artwork with “dark” inner sleeve visible through die-cut almond shape and the vinyl label visible through the inner sleeve “middle hole”

In January 2020 — a few weeks before the pandemic came — Max, bass player of Tausend Augen (“1000 eyes”), approached me and asked me if I would like to design the artwork for their debut album Westend. It rarely happens that a band has a specific typeface in mind when it comes to their records, but Tausend Augen did: It turned out they all loved Klaus Schulze’s Irrlicht album, and from day one it was clear that the “Irrlicht font”, as they called Electric Circus, originally designed by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar around 1960, had to be the typeface for their debut album.

As there is no digital version of Electric Circus available, I started digitizing it myself. Our version with the working title Electric Eyes was made specifically for this project, with some adjustments in the details, and will not be released to the public.

It wasn’t easy to source proper references. In fact, the alphabet overview in New Alphabets A to Z (Herbert Spencer & Colin Forbes, 1974) that Stephen discovered was the best I could find. In this reference, the letters are slightly distorted, but I got the idea and the large “R” helped a lot with the details. I started with the letters we needed to set the Tausend Augen band name, and then I added the rest of the uppercase alphabet and some basic punctuation. The numbers I found especially tricky, because I had no references for them.

In comparison to the original, I changed a few details (but not too many), mainly to harmonize the alphabet, and decided to add a version with slightly rounded corners. Those I noticed first in the large R in A to Z, and I thought they would look great in large display uses.

Through die-cuts, the album artwork plays with visual perception in a modular way and comes with alternate inner sleeve and vinyl label options. Depending on assembly, each LP looks different. Without inner sleeve or record, the LP cover alone turns into a blank template for any eye possible (at least ‘a thousand’). The vinyls originally came in silver, turquoise and pink colors. A green option was added in the 2021 repress.

To celebrate the album release, a microsite was launched. Tausendaugen.org runs on Persona, a personal site builder, and uses their signature WebGL filters to push the static distortion of Electric Circus into dynamic, mouse-reactive movement.

Electric Eyes, our own version of Electric Circus

LP back artwork with alternate vinyl label visible through die-cut circle

LP cover, “dark” inner sleeve and turquoise colored vinyl

LP cover, “light” inner sleeve and silver colored vinyl

LP animation

LP front detail: cover with die-cuts and without inner sleeve or record

CD digipack version

The Tausend Augen website

The Tausend Augen website

The Tausend Augen website