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Wallpaper / Art & Graphic Design — 2009 · Private Client

Out of Darkness

A desktop wallpaper on a near-black field: at the centre sits the studio’s own rounded-square mark, a bracket open at the lower right with a curved lobe inside, drawn in glossy black that is legible only from its hairline white rim lights and repeated outline offsets, while a swarm of fine red curves orbits the mark like a pinched ring of field lines, passing behind it at the top and across its lower left, and the letter-spaced address revivalgh.blogspot.com is set low in the field with its first syllable in red.

A 2009 desktop wallpaper by Paa Kofi Tetteh: the studio’s own mark drawn out of a black ground by its rim light alone and set inside a sweep of fine red orbital curves. The studio gave it away as a download, so the one plate here is that file at its full 1280 by 800 pixels.

The post that documents it is WALLPAPER - OUT OF THE DARKNESS, published on the studio’s blog on 15 May 2009, and its entire text is one line of credit and one instruction: “This wallpaper was designed earlier this year by Paa Kofi Tetteh. You could download it for free right here by clicking on the image for a larger version and saving it to your computer.” The download is the work — nothing was shot, rendered or printed for it, and the file the studio offered is the file kept here.

It is composed as a desktop. The canvas is 1280 by 800 pixels, a common laptop size of the period, with the mark held at the centre of the frame where a column of icons would not cover it and the blog address letter-spaced low in the field. The mark is the studio’s own device: a rounded square open at the lower right with a curved lobe inside, drawn in black on black and made readable only by hairline white rim lights and repeated outline offsets, so it appears out of the ground the title names.

Around it runs a swarm of thin red curves, an orbit of nested ellipses pinched where they pass behind the mark and crossing in front of its lower left. Apart from the red first syllable of the address beneath, that line work is the only colour in the picture.

Two more wallpapers followed on the same blog later in 2009 — a BRIGHTEST IDEA pair in September and the.SEED.v.1.0 in October — each on the same 1280 by 800 canvas and each carrying the same mark, of which this is the earliest.

The project is on blogspot.

A desktop wallpaper on a near-black field: at the centre sits the studio’s own rounded-square mark, a bracket open at the lower right with a curved lobe inside, drawn in glossy black that is legible only from its hairline white rim lights and repeated outline offsets, while a swarm of fine red curves orbits the mark like a pinched ring of field lines, passing behind it at the top and across its lower left, and the letter-spaced address revivalgh.blogspot.com is set low in the field with its first syllable in red.