Alice Twemlow, kicking off a piece for Design Observer, points us to a Very Short List post giddily discussing an album which is a soundtrack without a film. Very Short List concludes the post reeling with the possibilities: “Dazzling book jackets without novels inside; awesome stage sets on which actors never set foot; kick-ass magazine covers with no accompanying articles . . . we love the myriad possibilities of this new cart-before-the-horse genre.”

Of course, something like this has been done many times before: Brian Eno’s “” (a 1978 album featuring soundtracks for imaginary films); Stanislaw Lem’s “” (reviews of imaginary books) and “” (introductions to imaginary books); and yes, even Harland Miller’s covers for imaginary books. The Design Observer article focuses on poster art, and the relationship between the poster and the (sometimes fictitious) event or product being promoted. It moves from minimal Japanese poster artist Ten do Ten whose designs only use huge black and red pixels, to Richard Niessen’s “Kong” poster: “A mosaic built up from pixellated K’s, O’s, N’s and G’s and fusing the game-scapes of Donkey Kong and Pong to create an architectural setting for King Kong.” Definitely worth a read.

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