The Album Deck of Cards
A new intersection between technology and music
2014 + 2018
The Story
Wolfe a new tangible album format which combined the best of the old with the best of the new. As such she created the world's first NFC Album Deck, marking a new intersection between technology and music. The album deck comes as a pack of beautifully printed cards, encased in a box reminiscent of a tape cassette, with each card corresponding to a track from her album and featuring the song’s artwork, lyrics and an embedded NFC chip. Listeners can simply tap the song cards to their phone to instantly play the track and access its content – liner notes, lyrics, artwork, music videos etc – which is being updated all the time, giving the album deck the feeling of a “living” or dynamic vinyl.
Album Deck of Cards - Montagu Square
World’s First Album Deck
2014 To accompany her Album Jacket, for her Montagu Square album release Wolfe released her second album as the world's first NFC Album Deck, marking a new intersection between technology and music.
Own the world's first NFC Album Deck, marking a new intersection between technology and music. Device must be NFC enabled to work.
Includes free complimentary download of album
Album Deck of Cards 2.0 - Raw Space
Collaborating with the world’s leading designers
2018 The Raw Space Album Deck is an update of Wolfe’s intelligent album deck of cards format, originally conceived for Montagu Square as a type of digital cassette tape. Produced in collaboration with ArtCenter College of Design and its Acting Chair of Graphic Design Sean Adams, each of the Raw Space song cards have been designed by a leading international artist to reflect their interpretation of Wolfe’s music. Listeners can simply tap the song card to their phone to instantly play the track and access its content—liner notes, lyrics, artwork, music VR videos etc—which is being updated all the time, giving the Album Deck the feeling of a “living” or dynamic vinyl. Release sold out in 3 days
A limited edition release has been printed exclusively for the US market. It’s launch will be announced shortly. The UK limited edition release was announced at Beatie Wolfe’s V&A exhibition and sold out in less than 3 days. Learn more about the deck and the designers HERE
Includes free complimentary download of album
Collaboration Background
Raw Space Album Deck
Beatie Wolfe has been working with Sean Adams (Chair of ArtCenter) and MOO to develop her Raw Space Album Deck (an update of her 'world's first' concept for her album Montagu Square) with some of the world's most influential designers, which include Erik Spiekermann, Marian Bantjes, Astrid Stavro, Lucienne Roberts (more about them below) who have each designed a song card for her Raw Space Deck
One of the key design visions Beatie had was to incorporate the gold mylar theme from her Raw Space Broadcast and Space Chamber into the deck of cards, which has never been done before so MOO accepted the challenge of inventing a way to incorporate gold foil onto its NFC cards
The Raw Space Album Deck at the V&A
The Designers
Erik Spiekermann (DEU) the first designer to be elected into the European Design Awards Hall of Fame; Marian Bantjes (CND) an internationally known designer with several works in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York; Astrid Stavro (ESP) a multi award winning designer, then of Atlas now the newest partner at Pentagram; Yuma Naito (JP/US) ArtCenter graduate and now with DesignStudio; Sean Adams (US) Acting Chair of the Graphic Design Program at ArtCenter and multi award-winning designer named one of the forty most important people shaping design internationally; Rafael Savvy (MX) Founder and Creative Director of Savvy Studios, and Lucienne Roberts (UK) graphic designer and co-curator of Design Museum’s 2018 exhibition “Hope to Nope”
Album Deck Reaction
Wolfe Album Deck format has been described as "a brilliant idea that transcends novelty" by The Next Web and "bleeding edge" by Wired. It received additional features in Recode, Forbes, Sky News, BBC Click, Tech Crunch and was premiered at London's Serpentine Gallery and at Wired's Next Generation conference where Wolfe gave a keynote.