Things We Wish For

Todd Sapio is Language Room. Todd is a good friend of the studio. Todd agreed to a most unusual contract agreement with us. We agreed to design his album, stickers, and limited edition prints at no cost. In return, he agreed to pay for whatever we designed and to give us complete creative control to experiment with form and put new production ideas into place. 

We translated each of the lyrics for the record into a corresponding foreign language. French, Italian, German, Korean, even Chinese. This seemed obvious. What we wanted to explore then was how pattern languages work, and if we could build ‘things we wish for’ from other patterns. These wished for things, to us, were mythical or whimsical creatures, even romanticized ones. Though the pegasus we rejected, the floral vulture, asian lion, indian elephant and flying squirrel we kept. Each lavishly formed from smaller patterns of griffins, lyres, fleur-de-lis, seed pods, flowers, and strange fractal forms that referenced nothing other than appropriate formal geometry.


These were not “knock outs” or crops, each character was built up of these ‘pattern languages’. This could be too literal a take on generative grammar, but it’s a rock and roll album. Get over it.

The printing at a glance appears to be black and white with a hit of metallic silver. However, on close inspection, the blacks will reveal a myriad of rich hues hidden within and next to the flat blacks. Not just rich blacks in general, but saturated with blue, red, yellow, individually.

The disc is the smoking jacket. Layered with textural effect, and that trick we’ll keep to ourselves. (Has to be another client out there who wants a crushed velvet private school Playboy Mansion jacket.)

Things We Wish For is available direct from the artist and through iTunes.