Verberis – The Apophatic Wilderness album art
The Apophatic Wilderness is the fourth album by Verberis, released by Norma Evangelium Diaboli (NoEvDia) on vinyl and compact disc.
The band provided me with the artwork by Ars Alchymiæ, all the credits and titles, the lyrics – counting fourteen hundred words including four words in Greek (ἄγνοια, ἀγνωσία, θεία ουσία) and one in Hebrew (אבדון) – and the image of the Knossos labyrinth as is known from, for example, coins. I wished we pulled off without the labyrinth, but – lo and behold! – the obscure image turned into the main typographic solution in the LP layout, and influenced the CD.
Together with the band we went through Tschichold’s Meisterbuch der Schrift to choose a typeface from a selection which I had marked as “interesting” or un-used, or unexpected to work with on a black metal design: Optima (or Stellar), set in all caps as in their early ‘grave’ uses; Centaur and similars (old-style, with a ‘flamboyant e’ as Riccardo Olocco calls it); and Civilité (a blackletter with no known previous usage in extreme metal). The band chose Centaur.
Early in the process, two wishes of the band turned into directives. The artwork had to occupy the entire front cover surface, thus cancelling my proposal to design it as a title page with the artwork taking the usual place of a publisher’s imprint there. This would solve the problem of impossibility of obtaining that artwork in sufficient resolution. And the image of the labyrinth must appear in the layout by all means.
End of May 2023, walking down Stargarder Straße in Berlin I found a book in a pile of trash: François Augiéras’ Eine Reise auf den Berg Athos, published by Matthes & Seitz in Berlin in 2019. I opened it and it struck me: “I want this!”. The book was set in Maiola Regular and Italic. I tested the book in dim light, the way I expect most listeners of extreme metal to look at their record sleeves when listening to music, and for my poor eyesight the italics were very very readable, while regular was by far harder to read, it was too light. Hence, in the design I went for Maiola’s Book weight.
The band’s initial expectation of the LP design was a gatefold format. On the contrary, I wished to save space, and to deliver the message on as little surface as possible. Thus appeared the plan:
1. Black on white print, no colors.
2. A simple vinyl cover, no gatefold.
3. Plain inner sleeve without any texts. NoEvDia, the record label, usually chooses a plain black sleeve.
4. No insert, i.e. without the common LP lyric sheet.
5. The artwork shall occupy the entire surface of the front cover, as demanded by the band. Originally in color, it shall be converted to black and white.
6. The labyrinth being essential to the album concept shall appear on the back cover.
7. No band and no publisher logos if possible. Everything shall be said with words, and delivered by means of typography.
8. All credits shall appear on the vinyl disc label stickers.
The idea of providing the complete lyrics on the back cover seemed even a better one, as it worked for displaying everything artistic about the album right away. The album message is perceptible before potential listeners may even begin to think about listening to the record. The band name, the album title and the publisher are mentioned on the cover spine; the song titles on the top edge (and on the disc labels on their respective sides).
Counting along the broader side of the Labyrinth on the Knossos drachma we get fifteen passages within sixteen walls. No choice: the outer walls shall appear as margins in the layout, the lyrics take the form of the passages and thus won’t cross.
By contemplation, I concluded that the lyrics were to be set in three lines for each passage, maybe each middle line rotated upside down enhancing the suggestion of wandering in the labyrinth. It wasn’t long before a better solution coincidentally surfaced. Max Ilyinov published his python code used to set a boustrophedon on the cover of Many Letters. All interviews of Type Journal. It had been tested in InDesign with a low contrast geometric sans serif, and mostly in Cyrillics. I could not use it because my type was a contrast serif, Latin and Greek, and InDesign was not my tool. But the idea of boustrophedon was clearly better than setting any lines upside down. It was just the right way to arrange the lines because of its Greek origin (+1 to the many other Greek links in the album concept).
Eventually, I manually created lines running backwards after converting type to outlines. Being inexperienced in practical type design, it did not occur to me that I could create a set of mirrored glyphs for Maiola, which would make the process faster.
Contrary to the all caps Ancient Greek, Latin and modern Greek alphabets have letters turned the direction opposite to the reading direction (a d g Jj Qq u y Zz and α Ζζ λ) which means that in the backwards lines they won’t require mirroring. Letters which may appear symmetrical in sans-serif with vertical axis (A H Ii l M Oo T U Vv Ww Xx Y and Α γ Δ Η Θθ Ιι Λ Μ ν Ξ Οο Π Ττ Υυ Φφ Χχ Ψψ Ωω) obtain a visible direction when they have an oblique axis and a modulated stroke, even though it’s not always easy to assert whether a letter is looking leftwards or rightwards. I mirrored those when the surrounding letters suggested that.
Some letters like d or q in the backwards lines would appear confusing, so, for example, I changed d to δ or ∂, and redesigned the only case of q for it to be clearly different from the mirrored p.
Some riddles were added to the setting, like mirroring the words “one’s own self” in the line “To perceive one’s own self reflected back…” or suddenly typing a backward line with correct, unmirrored letters but in reverse order; and more, with varying levels of refinement. Navigating through the labyrinth turns into an adventure, and the challenges (call them hindrances) on the readers’ way organically grow from the meanings of the words of the lyrics they represent.
The vinyl labels were designed without the boustrophedon. Enough! I thought. They were heavily inspired by a gravestone I saw in the Collegiate Church of St. Stephan in Mainz. It is an eleventh century stone, damaged in WWII, next to which is a clean, undamaged replica (see photo). It has plenty of ligatures, which inspired me to enrich Maiola in my design with AB AD AF AL AN AR AT AW BE ED ER LL LO ME NA OF OR RD RE RO RU TE TH TR UM UR WA. The only original Maiola ligature on the labels is the Æ character. And, by the way, the gravestone has the real mirrored writing in the bottom edge line, an uncommon feature for its time and place of origin.
All the texts on the vinyl release are set in Maiola Book and Book Italic 10/≈11.4. The only exception is made for proper names on the vinyl labels: they are set in Maiola Regular ≈12.2 pt — the size where the width of the vertical stroke of its small-caps i equals to that of Maiola Book 10 pt.
The compact disc typography is set in Maiola Book ≈8/10 which is fair because the format is smaller, and there are strong reasons to assume the CD booklets are generally being held closer to the eyes than the vinyl inserts or any larger prints.
